This past Sunday I raced the 47th annual Austin American-Statesman Capitol 10k. The Cap10k is the largest 10k in Texas, and one of the largest in the nation. The Cap10k holds a place in my heart for a couple reasons. 1) it’s the hometown race and 2) in 2014, the year after I’d started running, it was going to be my first race.
I’d only run Cap10k once before in 2016. Since then, I’d gotten into marathons and half marathons, and often times, the Boston Marathon was the same weekend as the Cap10k and we’d be up in Boston. In 2019 the Cap10k was canceled because of an amazing thunderstorm that rolled in that morning. I was ready to race that morning, so I ran my own Cap30k around the neighborhood in the thunderstorm. The 2020 and 2021 races were canceled because of COVID.
I qualified for this year’s Boston Marathon my a large margin, but we’re not going to Boston this week because prom is on Saturday, and Maly’s 18th birthday is on Marathon Monday. So I decided I’d sign up for our hometown 10k this year. I didn’t write out a training plan for myself for the race, but I trained for it. I did some hill workouts, and a lot of interval workouts; some on my own, and some with the Run Texas Track Club. I threw in a hard tempo late in the block to see if I could sustain a pace that might bring a sub-37-minute time.
I changed my race plan to sub-38 the week of the race, thinking that goal should be achievable, and if I could get somewhere around 37:30, that could probably get me a spot on the podium in my age division.
I was wrong. I was basing my 37:30 on the two years’ prior results. My age division showed up this year and dropped the hammer. I knew who two of my competitors were, and we were all lined up at the very front, and I tried to stay tucked in behind them when the gun went off, but they charged strong up the hills and I lost sight of them both before the 5k split. I held out hope though, thinking they might be first and second, and I could secure a 3rd place spot, but there were two other guys in the field that were up ahead and put me in 5th place.
It was fun race. Everyone charged out hot in the first mile. I knew I couldn’t keep that pace, so I dialed it back but stayed strong and settled into my race pace when the hills hit us after the first mile. I was damn near gassed at mile 4, but knew I had a flat remainder of the course, and there was no one near me, and I didn’t want anyone to pass me that late in the race, so I just gutted it out and told myself to hang on for 12 more minutes.
I PR’d the 10k in 37:17 (previous PR of 37:22).
