As results were now officially posted online, I spent part of my morning checking them out and I couldn't help but take notice of some interesting points.
The official time for the first place runner among the men in the 10km race was 36 minutes. I'm eager to get WOW President to sign up for another race and urge him to see what his personal best time would be. I'm pretty sure he'd clock in around the 40 minute mark but it'd be awesome to give him some kind of tighter time goal like 36 or 37 minutes. Mind you, shaving off 3-4 minutes off a finish time is super hard. He's good for it though. If anyone can do it he can!
Coming in first place for the women's 10km was a Korean lady who finished at 41 minutes and out of the top four female runners for this race, three of us were above 30. I'm impressed. Take that you young 20 years olds... hahaha. I didn't get a chance to talk to the first place woman but I checked her out and am pretty sure she was a mom of two kids. I'm always impressed by people like this -- people who break stereotypes surrounding age and circumstances. She may be well into her 30's and have two young kids to look after but she beat us all and I think that's pretty amazing. I saw a quote online once that read "Someone busier than you is running" and I'm pretty sure they were referring to this particular woman.
There were only five female participants for the half marathon but about 130 male participants. I know of a lady who participated in it. She came in third place, which is great, but the total lack of female participants for her to compete against wasn't so great. Having seen her Facebook status updates of her doing morning runs at the ungodly brutal time of 4:30am and knowing that she did this while juggling being a full time mom/wife and working, I honestly felt bad for her. I'm sure it would have been encouraging for her to see more women out there doing the half with her. It would have definitely made all her hard effort more worth it. Personally, I wouldn't have put myself out there for such a long run unless there was a decent amount of competition. You don't just go out and run a half, you train for it and then, even after all the training, you push and pull yourself to the finish line. It's a long run.
My pacing for my last half was about 5:07min/km which I think is pretty good considering the pacing for my shorter runs has been around the five minute mark. I've been emailing one of my former Flipside Fitness gals who is a pro star runner and picking her brain about running. This past weekend she just ran a half marathon and successfully got her goal time she had set for herself. We talked today about how to increase your pacing. Training for a short run verses training for a longer run, like a half or full marathon, is very different. My HIIT sprints really helped me out a lot for preparing for my "Next Time" 10km but now I'm thinking about training for another half or possibly my first full marathon. She told me that one of the key things she's picked up for training for a long run is getting in the milage -- doing longer runs and no worrying so much about pacing. Good tip.
My friend has done various full marathons and is now considering doing longer ones, like a 50km. I'm impressed but a bit intimidated too. That's pretty hardcore to be running for 50km, I thought a full marathon was already super impressive. I'm curious though, what do you really do to preoccupy yourself when you're running for that long?! For all my runs I need music but even during my half marathon, when I had music blasting through my earphones, I found I needed something more. I ended up counting songs and not really enjoying them so they didn't really help me. Perhaps an audio book would help me or something like "Theater of the Mind", a radio station broadcast I used to listen to on Sunday nights that told of mind boggling murder mysteries. I know when I'm out doing a long run during training, I usually go with a running partner so we end up chatting the kilometers away but what about when it's race day? I have two running partners here in Cheonan but I suspect neither of them would run a full with me so chatting through a full marathon with one of them isn't a possibility. Maybe I could call someone and chat with them for the entire race?! Hmm... strange, sure, but perhaps not so strange.
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