Yesterday I ran the Dawg Dash put on by the UW Alumni Association. It was a joint 10K run and a 5K run/walk. I was going for the 10K run, along with Jeff, Jonobie, and Adam. Jess and Kaitlin did the 5K walk. Zach was slated for the 10K but wasn’t feeling well.
It was a sea of purple. Lots and lots of purple. Just last Thursday I was bemoaning that I didn’t own a purple shirt to wear for Spirit Day and thanks to the race swag, I now own one. I, however, showed up in a red shirt not at all thinking about the UW / WS rivalry. Whoops!
It was slightly overcast and earlier it had rained making for a wet route, but overall it was perfect running weather. The 10K and 5K racers all started out together. Jeff and I started out in the 7- to 8-minute mile pace group and maybe for the first time in a race people were pretty accurate: we didn’t have to dodge people who were obviously overly-optimistic about their pace time.
The course itself was very pretty and winded through the UW campus. I’d never been to the UW campus before and was impressed with all the green and the architecture. I was distinctly unimpressed with the hills (my glutes are killing me today). The course was odd as towards the beginning it doubled back on itself with signs to stay left on the first pass and right on the second then the 5K and 10K separated, then later joined back together, separated again after running down a short set of stairs (on which I almost bit it as I hit the split wide, planted my foot to aim for the other route, and watched my right floot slide 3 feet on the wet concrete before catching myself), and joined back together before crossing the finish line.
All of this joining and splitting must have confused the poor Husky race designers, because the 10K wasn’t the expected 6.2 miles. Instead it was somewhere around 5.75 miles. The official results were reported assuming a 5.77 mile course although given they don’t know how the course got shortened, I’m not sure there’s a lot of confidence that is the right distance.
I didn’t do as well as I wanted (which was to maintain my best 5K time of a 7-minute mile or 43 minutes for a 10K; 40 minutes for 5.77 miles) but considering the course was much hillier than any of my other training runs, my finish was pretty respectable:
- time: 43:43
- pace: 7:35
- 199th overall (out of 1372)
- 46th in my division: Males 30-39 (out of 196)
- 158th in my gender (out of 635)
For this distance, this is a new personal record. I feel confident that I could have maintained that pace for the last 0.43 miles of a real 10K, so I’m marking this up as an overall success.
Congrats to Jeff, Jonobie, Adam, Jess, and Kaitlin for finishing and thanks to Chris for coming out to cheer me on!
Maybe next year those Huskies will learn what “10K” actually means.
Digital Ramblings 