Teacher's Day Virtual 10k

I don't often run virtual races, but this was one I couldn't turn down. The medal is adorable and goes along with my growing collection of apple paraphernalia, and the cause is one I absolutely was willing to support.

Click for more info.

I signed up April 28 to run the Teacher's Day virtual race, and decided I may as well sign up for the 10k option because it was priced the same as the 5k and I was planning to run 8 miles on May 1 anyway.

Sunday morning, I had a packet of UCAN and half a pop tart. (I'm officially out of UCAN and ordered more while I drank it this morning; I'm absolutely a believer, and my performance on this run solidified that!)

I had been starving Saturday night and definitely overindulged in carbs, but in the end I decided that was okay because I didn't want to be hungry or depleted on "race day." I also drank a ton of water Saturday, and I could tell it paid off!

This was the longest run I'd done since the Marco half, and I was feeling a little nervous. I'm definitely in denial about summer's approach; I picked up Elizabeth and we began the run just before 7am. It was already sunny and warm. Luckily, the route I chose is fairly shady until about 9am, but it's time to start planning our long runs well before sunrise.

Anyway, we saw Adria at the very start of the run and that seemed to get us off on the right foot. We kept our pace nice and consistent - I wanted to keep it slow and easy after Friday's run - and we ended up running very even splits! My calves were tight in the beginning, but I didn't let it worry me too much.

At mile 3, my legs finally woke up and I started to feel really good. I slowly increased the pace; although we did have to pause at a couple crosswalks, we didn't take any walk breaks. I also didn't push too hard because 1) long runs are meant to be easy, and 2) Elizabeth was struggling a little toward the end.

I had water with me in my Flip Belt but I didn't end up needing any. I felt totally unstoppable during the entire run. I just felt right. I love when that happens!

I'm glad I got to try out the water bottles today even though I didn't use them. They were really comfortable, didn't bounce, and didn't leak!

I didn't actually take any pictures on this run, which makes this race recap kind of lame. Sorry about that! I was just too "in the zone" to pause for pictures.

Our overall pace was 10:56 and the run took 1:27; I was pretty happy with that because I'd estimated it would be 90 minutes.

Technically, because the "race" portion of this run was the 10k, my time was ~1:08:40. I love that this easy-effort long run actually truly felt easy. It feels like my consistency is paying off and I know I could have pushed this and "raced" if I had wanted to.

I came home and had a hardboiled egg, then showered and took a very long nap. Later in the afternoon I had may last piece of flourless chocolate cake and ice cream to celebrate.

All in all, this was a great long run and a solid "race"!

ABK

Thanks for hosting, Erika!