A year ago I’m not sure I could have walked a 10K but yep, I did it.  There’s 6.2 miles in a 10k and I ran them all!

A couple weekends ago the USAF held their annual Marathon. They include a 5K, a 10K, and a 1/2 Marathon as well.  I ran a 5K back in August and got big headed so I decided to sign up for the 10K.  My friend Bob and I decided to sign up and run together.  I trained for several weeks running 3 or 4 miles at a pop to get ready. I only ran the entire 6.2 miles once before the actual race – I had to run it once just to know I could.  With race day just one day away Bob and I decided we should go carb load so we went out for pasta at Mama DiSalvo’s and consumed spaghetti and lots of Amber Boch.  Turns out to have been an excellent plan!

We arrived on base the morning of the race just in time to see the Marathon kick off.   They had a cool fly over of a F16, a F16, and a F22 all one after another.   Each flew in low and did a viking launch straight up into the clouds in full after burner.  Pretty cool – pretty loud.

For the 10k race there were about 1300 people signed up and we started with the people in the 1/2 marathon too.  There were probably 3000 people or more at the start line.

When the gun fired we literally didn’t move   We just stood there waiting for all those people to get moving.  Even when we crossed the start line we were just walking…  a few hundred yard later we got going it was all good.  The first part of the race was up hill for 2 miles.  Then it was level or downhill from there out.

I’m happy to say I finished with an official “chip” time I finished in 1 hour and 25 seconds.  That’s a pace of 9:45 per mile.  That puts me 280th out of 781 finishers.    Considering that I hoped to finish in an hour and 15 or 20 minutes I’m pretty pleased with my time.  On the other hand – 26 seconds faster and I’d have been under an hour!  I could have made up the 26 seconds if I’d just worn a watch!  Now I’ll have to do it again to break the hour time barrier!

The official numbers!

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