DC ROAD RUNNERS CLUB BREAD RUN 10K (race report):

This race marks the beginning of a new attitude toward racing for me. My goal now is to win, rather than just to run some particular time. If I can't win, then my back-up goal is to place as highly as possible. The idea is to use competition to spur me on to running faster and to dictate my pacing strategy (along with how I feel, of course) instead of some pre-race plan. Deploying this attitude is difficult at big races in the Washington, DC area, because they draw elite and semi-professional runners with whom I can't possibly compete, although I find running behind them motivating in a different way (when I can see them). But I can let competitiveness drive me at big races in relation to the runners I find around me at a given point. It's easier to deploy this attitude at smaller races, though, which I do have some realistic hope of winning. My plan at this DCRRC race was to stay at the front as long as possible, unless the leaders were obviously much faster than me, in which case I'd let them go and stay with the fastest runners I could possibly imagine keeping up with. Again, the idea is to push myself through competition, and I realize that going out fast and trying to hang on for your life isn't the best pacing strategy for a fast time, because you're likely to drop off and slow way down. But it's a great strategy for testing your limits and trying to push through them.

I started this race knowing nothing about the course except that about half of it was on the C&O Canal towpath, which is a dirt and gravel trail that's mostly flat and straight. The rest of the course was on an asphalt path and, briefly, roads. Immediately before the race, the starter said something about steep hills, mud, and low tree branches, but it was difficult to tell whether this was truth or bravado. I led the race from the start as the course went up a short hill, turned 180 degrees, and then followed an asphalt bike path for a couple miles. One runner was just off my left shoulder and occasionally I could hear at least one other runner behind him, but I never looked back and had no idea how many others were nearby. My first mile split was 6:13 and I felt comfortable. But I must have slowed a bit after that, because the runner on my shoulder decided to pass me and set the pace after 1.5 miles. At that point I realized that I was in a pack of six runners that was stretched out a bit because of the narrow bike path. Our split for mile 2 was 6:17, and I was still doing fine. Then the course turned off the bike path and onto residential streets that sloped gradually downhill. Another runner moved to the front and pushed the pace down to around 6:00, which felt good to me although I knew that I couldn't do it for very long. Soon, though, we were directed to turn off the street and onto a narrow, dirt path that zigzagged down a steep hill. At the bottom of the hill, we crossed a bridge and careened down a tightly curled spiral walkway that zipped us around 2-3 times before throwing us out onto the towpath. By this point I was getting disoriented. I pretty much always run on asphalt or concrete and haven't been running many hills lately. That steep downhill trail, then the weird spiral thing, and now the loose footing on the towpath left me struggling to stay with the lead pack. Just before halfway I started falling back and never regained contact. Another runner, the one who first passed me, also fell back shortly after I did and stayed about 20 feet ahead of me as the pack maintained its pace and receded down the trail ahead of us. The two of us slowed down at roughly the same rate: my split for mile 4 was 6:32, and mile 5 was 6:43. I had lost my drive once winning was no longer a possibility, but what I should have done was pushed until I caught the guy in front of me. Then we could have had a mini-race of our own to the finish. Instead, I just kind of hung on as the course crossed back over the canal after 5 miles and started up a dirt trail as steep as the one we had flown down before. It was so steep that wooden steps had been built into it so that people don't just slide down the dirt. About halfway up the hill, I figured that I wasn't running much faster than I could walk, so I power-walked up the steps for a little while. This enabled the next runner back to make up some ground on me. I waited until he was about 10 feet away before starting to run again, figuring that I could hold him off once the course leveled out. At the top of the hill, we found ourselves on the bike path again, and the guy ahead of me looked to be doing at least as badly as I was. So I set my sights on passing him and holding off the guy who was closing in on me from behind. But in the end I achieved neither. The guy behind me really got moving on the level path and passed me just before the 6 mile mark. Soon he caught the guy ahead of me too, which galvanized him to speed up and try to hold onto his place (which he also failed to do). No doubt I could have dug deeper and put in more of a fight at the end, but honestly I quit fighting when I lost touch with the lead pack miles earlier, and that steep climb near the end was not the sort of thing I'm used to encountering in a 10k. I coasted across the finish line in seventh place in 40:42 - a time that reflects the nature of the course. It was at least as much a trail run as a road race.

So this was a learning experience. Next time, especially if I don't know the course, I'll try running with the lead group without setting the pace from the start. Even if I had done that today, it wouldn't have helped me deal with that steep off-road downhill and spiral thing that forced me out of my rhythm, which I couldn't get back again on the towpath, in part because of the loose footing. I don't deal well with pace or course changes that break my rhythm, or with trails for that matter. But still, in hindsight I think I could have just suffered for a little while longer in order to stay with the pack and see whether I could find a new rhythm on the towpath at that pace instead of slowing down.