This will be short and sweet because... it was a pretty "smooth" and middle-of-the-road performance.
I headed up to Boulder to start the race with some close family friends/cycling buddies/my aunt & uncle of cycling. They were starting only one qualifier wave ahead of me so I thought it a perfect situation.
We walked/jogged to the start from their house which offered a nice warm up. I had just enough time to get to the bathroom and stand around in my wave for a little bit.
As we approached the start line, the announcer said we were the last "under an hour" 10k qualifier wave. The last of the "real runners." A) I feel bad for those over an hour, because you can do a 10k over an hour and still be under a 10 min/mile (which I generally regard as the jogging/running threshold). B) LAWL.
We started off and because there was open road people gunned it off the start line. I was like "for real people? you qualified in just under and hour and you're doing a 6 min/mile off the start line? stupid." So I settled in to what my watch said was about a 9:05 pace.
My watch has been chronically showing the distance of my races to be over the actual distance (lovely) so my watch splits and race splits were different. Please forgive me if I am off a few seconds in recounting time. While my chip time and watch time were both 59:23 to finish, my watch showed 6.33 miles, so a 9:23 pace, whereas for a 10k - that is 9:33. Important nuance.
Anyway, so my first mile was pretty good. I believe my chip time was 9:15 or something like that. I was happy with this. It wasn't a particularly hard mile and I didn't feel like I blew it up. My second mile included a large hill, so I believe my chip time on that was 9:44 or something like that. 3rd mile was solid middle-of-the-road at around 9:30.
This whole time, my friends had started about 1 min ahead of me so I was looking for them to chase them down. They guessed they would run it pretty slowly so they thought I would pass them sooner than I had. Finally I spotted them at mile 2. It was kind of fun to play the chasing game. Just before the 5k point (I believe) I passed them, swung into a water stop and went up another BIG OL hill. Mile 4, with said "big ol' hill" again was slower, in the 9:40s. Mile 5 was fast and flat again. We hit some sun, but it was the first part of the course where I'd really felt like I was combating anything but perfect weather and some hills. I believe that was my fastest mile, around 9:13 or something like that. Mile 6 was pretty mediocre. A little hilly, until I got to the big hill at the bottom of the stadium and it dropped my pace drastically. Oh well, it happens. Once I was done telling myself to "keep running" up the hill, I bounded into the stadium.
I was pretty happy with my time. It certainly wasn't my best 10k but it sure could've been worse. A solid performance given where I am with running and the course.
Now for Elephant Rock Ride this weekend (only 2300 ft of gain...PHEW) and Boulder Sunrise on June 7! I'm not..ya know, panicking or anything, but I will say I'm practicing transitions tonight and trying to get in open water this weekend.
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