Dogfish Dash
Hey everyone! This is a guest post by my friend, Paul Cox (from Wayward Winos)
This Sunday I ran the first of two 10k races of the fall season in Milton, Delaware— the Dogfish Dash.
As for my performance, I must say that I am quite pleased. Here’s the breakdown leading up to race day.
Though I haven’t been too pleased with AT&T, the iPhone has more than made my life better and it in the running arena, this is especially useful. With application combo of Runkeeper and Pandora, I’ve been able to make my distance training a bit more bearable and tremendously more efficient with the ability to time and track all my sessions.
The longest training run prior to this race was approximately 3.37 miles, with a pace of 9:05 minutes per mile. This for me was a barely tolerable pace, but nearly repeatable in other training sessions. Another event had me at 3.29 miles with a 9:09 minutes per mile, again on the cusp of my limit.
Race day, the distance was a bit shy of twice what I had been running for the last month. Also, the street course was riddled with puddles and the air was thick and chilly from the fog and rain all evening, so circumstances were very different from what I had been accustomed to, however I was able to cross the finish line at 59:13. This time just beat my goal of finishing in one hour, which pleased me for the moment (9:33 minutes per mile, which is about 25 seconds more than I have been running the 3.29 miles). I now have a base time to train with to better my time for the next race.
Besides the different weather conditions, I was also out of some other utilities, i.e. my phone. I didn’t want to risk running with it because of the rain, so instead I went equipped with only my watch, which I have refrained from using during training due to my sneaky sensation to watch my pace. I’ve learned that it actually reduces my speed. The iPhone is out of sight and hard to monitor until the race is done. The watch however is accessible and gives me an excuse to check my pace, normally to slower one.
Despite these minor differences, I am in a love-hate relationship with my time. I love it because compared to my half marathon results (13.1 miles with a time of 2:12 hours, a 10.1 minutes per mile pace), it’s better, but compared to my current training it isn’t what I expected.
Next race is in nearly a month. I hope to shave 15 seconds off each mile.
The Dogfish Dash is a 10k or 5k race that takes place every year to benefit the Nature Conservancy. For more about the race experience, check out Wayward Winos.
