The Foxboro Old Fashioned 10 Miler went very well Sunday. No matter what, this was going to be a PR, because I never had run a 10 mile race before. Originally I was just hoping to match my Raynham 15K pace of around 6:50/mile, which also happens to be my target pace for next month's New Bedford Half Marathon. On Saturday however, I drove around the Foxboro course and found quite a bit of ice and slush on the roads; at that point I decided anything under 7 minutes/mile (1:10:00 total) would be OK. By the way, speaking of New Bedford, I sent in my entry, so there is no turning back now.
On race day the temps were above freezing and the sun was shining. The finish had to be rerouted a bit because the parking lot where it normally is was still suitable for hockey. The already narrow start road was further marginalized by icing along each edge. My plan (again!) was to not start too hard, so this time I lined up well away from the front row. In fact, by the time the race went off, I was more than halfway back in the field of 430 runners. The first quarter mile over the ice ended up little faster than a jog, with the half mile point going by at a pedestrian 3:55. Once out on the main road, making my way up the yellow line, my HR got up to around 160 bpm and the first mile marker passed at 7:02. The second half of mile one may have still been a bit harder than I wanted to run, but there was a little downhill out of Foxboro center and I got it back under control.
I never saw mile marker two, but the third came up at 20:11. This was on a shaded road along the edge of the state forest where Saturday's ice had all but disappeared. The uphill fourth mile passed in 6:57, causing me to pick it up a bit, with the slightly downhill fifth taking just 6:19 for a halfway split of 33:28. In the shadows of Gillette Stadium, the sixth mile went by in 6:36. To this point, and through the finish, only one person had passed me, and I think he was someone I'd passed earlier. This guy was really tall and pulling away, but I focused ahead on him and tried to draw myself down the road. My running form is much better than it used to be, and even though I fell apart a bit here and there, for the most part I kept it together and stayed in a good rhythm with proper posture and stride.
The seventh mile had some uphill in it and took me 6:52. Post race the other runners I talked with agreed that mile marker eight may have been misplaced. Mile eight took me 7:21, and with a cumulative 54:18 on the watch I panicked a bit and started to really crank. Passing a runner or two, this effort brought me to mile marker nine in just 5:48. I know I picked it up, but that just ain't right, so I'm guessing mile 8 was long and mile 9 was short. The last mile was flat and fast, and I really suffered as I didn't want to give up any spots, but there was nobody within reach ahead of me either. Finishing it off in 6:11 wrapped up the race with an official finish time of 1:06:14, a 6:38/mile average pace. Needless to say, I am stoked by this result. My HR was almost a flat line throughout, just a slight ramping from 160 up to 170 by race end. Now, dare I say it, 1:30 has to be my New Bedford goal. I don't want to jinx it, and I'll be satisfied with anything under 1:31:30 (6:59 pace).
The rest of the weekend I got a lot done. Right after Foxboro I headed in to Harvard to shoot some video of KL at the track meet. We're still working on that... Sold the Toyota on Monday, sad to see it go, especially for just $340. That car took me to a lot of races, but after 204,000 miles of neglect, the time and effort required to keep it going just wasn't worth it anymore. Did an hour on the trainer Monday too; it was much too cold and windy to ride outside (for me anyway). I did order up a cheap replacement fork for the Yo Eddy though, as well as straighten out the dropout on the cross bike, so hopefully I'll have them both back in service for morning rides before we prematurely set the clocks ahead next month. That's all folks, thanks for reading.
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