Notes
Friday Night Lights 10k! Great event hosted by GBTC and WMDP, at Danehy Park in Cambridge. Ran in the faster of two open 10k heats, not quite under the lights but still a nice late starting time of 7:40 PM. Last year was a scorcher, but this year it was a great night to run fast - cool temps and no wind. Perfect for a track 10k debut!
Going into this I estimated my fitness at 34:00, although that didn't get any boost from Tuesday's workout. Figured I should be able to run 5:2x the whole way, just wanted to find a group I could stick on and hope that I was up for the mental grind. Got some good advice from Shannon to be patient, and made sure to start at what felt like it was a very manageable pace. Came through 1600 in ~5:24 feeling good and started gaining some confidence. I let the front pack go after the first mile, but latched onto a CSU guy and sat on him through 5k, 16:55 on my watch. Just after 5k a WMDP guy made a big pass on us which I covered, I think I got him by the end. Ran an 80s quarter at that point and thought "hey, I can do this to the end" but that wasn't quite the case. Honestly lost a bit of focus in the second half, went 5:26/5:24/5:30 (oof) and ended up with perfectly even 5k splits, but I think the pace was more spotty and that I was settling and surging alternatively without anyone to latch onto. Summoned a 73s last lap which tells me that I probably had a little more in the tank during the last mile or two...
Don't consider this an outstanding time, even for me, but I thought it was solid! Pleasantly surprised myself, racing 10k wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Would do again... don't think I had significantly much better in me tonight, but I'm sure I can run much faster in the future.
63.2 VDOT, equivalent to 16:17 / 4:44 - hey that's what I ran in my 1 mile TT!