Mitchell’s Brewery Sundowner 10km Update
It feels good to reach your goals. When I started running with a purpose earlier this year, one of my short term goals was to run a sub 40 minute 10km. This is what I call a “subset” goal. My main focus is and has always been on the Comrades in June 2007, and I simply hoped that one of the benefits of training for Comrades would be a sub 40 minute 10km.
My first opportunity came in September, at the Cape Town Marathon 10km. I was on course until I hit a an obstacle, namely the end of the race. The race was 916m short, thereby not an official sub 40 minute time.
The next opportunity would be the Mitchell’s Brewery Sundowner 10km, as I posted yesterday. What a fantastic race. Starts out in the heart of the V&A Waterfront, (check out a map of the race here) run along Sea Point and back.
I managed to start at the front of the race, which helps hugely in a short race where seconds count. Here are my km splits & split time with some thoughts at the time.
- 1km – 3:46 – Fast start, but feeling good and I know there are no hills to worry about.
- 2km – 3:42 / 7:28 – Wow, still flying along, but feel happy at this pace.
- 3km – 3:48 / 11:17 – Ok, going to have to slow down soon, but I’m running with some other runner’s who perhaps are stronger than me and I can just hang on.
- 4km – 3:51 / 15:09 – Much better pace, far more comfortable and can feel the control coming back to me.
- 5km – 3:57 / 19:06 – This was the split I was waiting for. I always like to run negative splits, but with that 5km time it wasn’t realistic. Sub 40 easily in my sights though.
- 6km – 3:59 / 23:06 – The turn around point just after 5km slowed me down a bit, but was happy to maintain a sub 4 min pace.
- 7km – 3:52 / 26:58 – Now the pace is starting to increase. Joined a +40 runner who clearly had loads of experience, so I thought I’d just hang with him to the finish.
- 8km – 3:54 / 30:52 – This was the second fastest 8km I’d ever run! And it was a 10km race… just hanging to the end. +40 runner eating my dust.
- 9km – 3:54 / 34:47 – Good pace, happy with it, considering how tired I was.
- 10km – 3:47 – 38:34 – A little push towards the finish and finally I can rest.
So, not only a sub 40, a solid sub 39, 38 minutes and 34 seconds. Very happy and very relieved to get that one over with.
Update: Race results can be found here. 32 out of 919, I’ll take that.
