Race Report: Zoo Zoom

When I started training for my first marathon, I pretty much threw shorter distance races out the window. Sure, I ran a 5k or two over the past year and a half, but I really focused on the half and full marathon distances. That strategy left me with a pretty old, and pretty dismal, 10k PR from two years ago. On Sunday, I corrected that.

I signed up for the Zoo Zoom 10k a while back, knowing that it would be an easy race about a month after the Rome marathon, and before running a short race on a Sunday would derail my long run plans. I didn't really train for it, but figured that I would PR if I showed up, since my last 10k was the same race in 2010. The good news for me is that I was right!

My old 10k PR, which earned me third place in my age group, was 49:33, or a sad 7:58 per mile. My half marathon PR is faster than that pace now! I did 7:20 per mile overall in the Valentine 4 Miler, so I figured the 7:30 to 7:45 range would be doable. My bottom line, after a PR, was to break 48:00.

I started out too fast as usual, doing my first mile in 7:23. I followed that up with 7:33, 7:43, then hovered in the mid-7:40s for the remainder. I finished strong in 47:42, at 7:42 per mile average. Apparently the field at this race has improved, because this finish only earned my 7th in my division (19-29 for this event), which netted me no hardware.

All told, I'm glad I have a respectable 10k PR, and hope to keep improving. I'm getting more serious about marathon training this time around, so that should help me improve in all distances.

Photo credit: John Blue, Sacramento Running News