Ok, so that was just about as hard as I predicted it to be.  Despite telling myself to just focus on running at a steady pace and to ignore everybody else, I really didn’t do that.  I started at the very back of the pack, hoping that the traffic ahead of me would slow me down and make me run at a reasonable pace.  In fact I was just in front of the Nordic Walking ladies, so I nervously kept some distance in front of them, hopefully out of pole-swinging reach, in case they held any hard feelings for our past run-ins.  At the starting gun it was awesome, all of those people running at the same time.  Anyway in spite of me telling myself that there was lots of race to run, I loped along at a very very unreasonable pace, passing much smarter people than I everywhere.  I was far too busy running to notice their (probable) knowing smirks at my misplaced enthusiasm.

Anyway this worked great for the first 4km or so, and then the day got hotter and I got tired.  Really tired.  Then all of these smart people started to trot past me and I felt not so smart.  At around the 7km marker I scoffed that someone was probably in big trouble since they messed up the 9km marker and put a 7 there instead.  And the race still didn’t end, and I had to keep lurching along like some kind of guy who thought he could run a race with hardly any preparation, and gallop the first 4km and think he could keep that up for the whole 10.  Yeah, just like that.

So needless to say it was harder to run that particular 10km than any of the other 10kms I have run in the past.  Yeah.  However I was happy to see my wonderful family waiting for me at the finish line cheering me on, and the last 10km didn’t seem so bad now that it was done.  Several bottles of water and a patch of shade and the real sweating can properly begin (why is it that the sweat seems to be worse after running is over?) and life is very good indeed.

So, despite messing up in the worst rookie way possible, I did manage to hit my goal of finishing in under an hour:  58min, 26sec.  I was pretty surprised to be able to do that actually, considering how very very bad the stretch between say, 5km and 9km was.  The last half let’s say.  Yeah that part. I’m happy with my time, except that apparently there were 59 guys in my age group that finished ahead of me.  That can’t be right, can it?  Yes, yes it can.  Get off your ass, Vallentyne and actually prepare for the race next time…

So, there you go.  The first one done, and not the last.  Next time I think maybe I will run with earbuds and some music to help keep me in my own race, and not try to beat everybody in the first 300m.  Yeah, that should be better.