This past Saturday I joined a friend of mine in driving to Lynchburg to run in the Virginia 10 Miler. It was really short notice – on Thursday she told me that her roommate had bailed on her (apparently visiting a boyfriend is more important than running! The horror!) and she really didn’t want to go alone. So on Saturday the 26th of September I woke up at 4:30 am and became Rose Wilken for the day.

The drive there was dark. Lynchburg is about an hour South of Charlottesville, so we hopped on 29 South. It turns out that it was actually a beautiful drive through the Virginia countryside, but we didn’t find that out until the way back, when we could actually see. We got a little lost looking for the road that would take us to the school where the race began – we thought we had gone past it, so we turned right into a parking lot to turn around. Turns out the parking lot was the parking lot for the school. Lucky us!

We shivered our way through packet pickup, pinned our bibs on, stretched, and headed out to the starting line. There were about 1500 runners total, with about 900 of those running the 10 miler and the rest running in the 4 miler. The course was an out and back from EC Glass High School to Riverside Park and back.  The first two miles of the course were downhill, and my friend and I stuck together at about a 9:45 mile. Then we hit the flat(ish) portion of the course, and at mile 3.5 we watched as the first runner blew by us going the other way. He ended up finishing in 48:40, a speed I can’t even fathom.

When we hit the park at mile 5 my friend and I split up and I went on ahead. I took a Chocolate Outrage GU and felt amazing, and before I knew it I was cranking out miles 5-8 at an 8:40 pace. The crowds were great, the bands were awesome, and the other runners were really nice and cheered me on. I high-fived an adorable little girl who was collecting them from passing runners, and got some water from another youngster who was helping out at the aid stations. I wish I’d stayed with water the entire race, because at mile 8 I had some gatorade and it was disgusting.

I hit the last hill and it was brutal, setting me back to a 10:00 pace to finish it out. By the time I could see the finish line I didn’t have much kick left in me! The post-race was very well organized with cold, wet towels, medals, helpers to take off the timing chips, and the best bagels in the world. Lots of fruit was available and they were handing out those delicious Hersheys Dark Chocolate Nuggets with Almonds (which I couldn’t stomach at the time but took some for the road).

I had a goal for the race of 1:40, as I have never run a 10 miler before and only had one day to prepare for a race. In the middle of the race I was able to shave off a lot of time, and decided to finish as strong as I could. My time was 1:34:25, way better than I had wanted to do! I was also very pleased that my 10k split was less than my previous PR. That definitely gives me confidence as my second 10k approaches (the Charlottesville Fall Classic on Oct 24). What I need to work on is being able to start off strong – usually it takes me 2-3 miles to really get going. I think that maybe taking a Gu after the first mile might be helpful in giving me the extra boost.

All in all it was a great race and I will definitely go next year if I have the transportation!
Click here for my Garmin data for this race