Notes
This was kind-of sort-of a "just for fun" race, but I was still hoping to do okay. Erin and I were going up to Cincinnati on Friday to see Six at the Aronoff and I had the idea to stay the night so I could run the 10K Saturday morning. We had an incredible dinner at Sotto, hit up the race expo, and had a blast at the show. I really got the racing fever seeing the town decorated for the race and all the runners filing out of the expo with their swag bags.
Race morning my weather app said 65 degrees with 99% humidity... not ideal. But it didn't really feel as muggy as I expected once we set out walking towards the start line at Paycor Stadium. I did a little warm up around the stadium and Erin found a place to watch the start. I probably could have started a little farther up, as it was pretty jumbled starting out and I had to thread my way through the throng for a bit.
The first mile went nice and easy. I was getting really optimistic and steadily made my way past the pack as we circled around an older, industrial area of the city. However, reality set in as I ascended the first bridge into Covington and suddenly things rapidly began to feel more difficult. Throughout the portion in Covington I could feel my body getting warmer and just really couldn't cool off with such high humidity. At each aid station I tried getting a cup of water and pouring it in my hat or down my back, which helped but only so much.
As we crossed over into Newport I bargained with myself to keep the same effort level until around the 4 mile mark and at that point I could try to pick the pace back up. By that point the field had thinned out except for a few other runners that I followed for the remainder of the race. The hardest part of the race was getting up the bridge going back into Cinci, followed immediately by another hill going up into downtown. I had to rework my strategy a little bit as these back-to-back climbs didn't leave me with much energy to accelerate until the last mile.
Luckily the last mile or so was downhill and then flat as the course traced itself alongside the river. I got passed once with about a mile to go but I was able to pick off a couple others as we approached the finish. I'm really proud of how I finished this race and my pacing overall worked out pretty well. My official time ended up 8 seconds short of my PR from January, but my recorded pace a little faster due to GPS variance. Considering the more difficult conditions this was arguably a better performance than Frozen Rails even if the official times do not agree.
I'm probably as happy as I've ever been with a non-PR result. It was a really fun race with a great atmosphere and an awesome addition to our getaway weekend. Erin and I got a great breakfast at the Sleepy Bee and hit up an awesome coffee shop called Deeper Roots before heading back to Lexington.