Date: October 6, 2018, 8:00 am
Distance: 10K
Place: Central Park, New York, NY
Weather: 63 F, 84% humidity
Finishers: 6, 063 total (2,904 men / 3,12 women)
Swag: T-shirt

This race honors the legacy of Grete Waitz, who won the NYC Marathon nine times and was the first woman to complete a marathon in under 2.5 hours.

0K – 5K
The first half of the race went relatively easy. For this race, I purposely took up the rear of the pack; I started the race in the K corral. I wanted to be in the back so I could a little slower than my marathon pace (4:30 marathon = 10:17 min/mi pace). However, I still found myself passing folks without too much effort within the 1st mile. Once we hit the first hill, I managed to dial it back a bit. During this segment, we climb our first (and toughest) hill in the course.

5K – 10K
I have to admit that I walked just a taste around mile 4 to eat half of a granola bar. Technically, mile 4 of the race was my mile 8. For these long-distance runs, I still have not learned the importance of eating during the activity. I’ve been getting better though. Normally, I try to eat something every 5 – 6 miles. On Sunday, I kept pushing back my snack “break”, which is something that I CANNOT do during the marathon. I kept telling myself “ok, you can eat after running another half of a mile.” I fear that I will be setting myself up for disaster if I keep doing that. Normally, it’s not a problem in my normal long runs (I usually have a Powerade/Gatorade around mile 6), but I guess that I was more in a race mode on Sunday.

All in all, it was a decent run. I’m glad that I still had plenty of juice left to run another 5 miles after finishing the race. It was really hard not to grab a bagel and go home after the run. However, I did load up my water bottle with post-race Gatorade and kept it moving for the next five miles.