Bear Creek Classic 10K Race Report

Some good news. I ran the Bear Creek Classic 10K in Surrey, British Columbia on Sunday morning and when I finished, I didn't have any pain in my back or shooting down my legs. (Now once I was driving back in the car to the apartment 40 minutes later was another story.)

I did do a little bit more stretching at the start of the race - despite the nice, steady rain (worse than Boise last Sunday) - and some at the end as well. Also, I realize that some of my problem may also be my posture. When I ran with my arms up high and around the middle of my chest and really focused on landing towards the front of my foot, things felt a little bit more fluid and I didn't have the pain shooting down the tops of my hamstrings.

What I need to do now is work on running more - in non-race conditions - with my arms up high as it tended to wear me out a little bit more than running with my arms closer to my waist.

The course that we ran on was something similar to Run The Woodlands 5K - given that it never crossed a street, stayed on Surrey sidewalks and then traversed through Bear Creek Park (which I enjoyed more than the park with the same name in Houston). Actually, that part reminded me more of Cullen Park when I trained for the hp Houston Marathon in 2005 with the Striders.

It was a two-loop course and it was nice and wet! (I registered for this Saturday afternoon after driving up from Washington state knowing that it was likely to rain pretty much all day.)

The event company, Try Events, used Race Headquarters of Canada to do their chip timing, but they only used the chips to determine placing - and not to calculate an actual chip time.

My official time was 1:04:48, but my "chip" time was 1:04:29.
I went through the first loop in 31:10.19 and the second loop in 33:19.29.

Because I felt comfortable, I tried to push it a little bit and the difference between Saturday and Sunday's races was that Sunday's races had some undulation to it. So for me to go a minute and a half better versus Saturday on a course that wasn't simply flat, I'll take it. But I'm far away from last November when I registered both my 10K and 5K PR's in a span of less than a month.

I'll get back there. I may have to delay my 4:30 marathon goal for awhile, but as long as I can run injury and pain-free that is all that matters.

As I was approaching the finish area on the first loop, I seriously gave some thought to just calling it an expensive 5K. But two things kept me from doing that. First, I wasn't happy with the 5K time and second, I remembered reading Kim Hager's race report about how she told runners she coached that races are supposed to be uncomfortable ... so I pressed on.

I wasn't any faster on the second loop, but on an out-and-back section in the last 2 kilometers of the loop I began to hit my old stride (feeling that I could stretch things out a little bit as I wasn't feeling any pain) and I was encouraged despite not having all of my fitness back.

Even though I was completely soaked after the run, cold and a little bit hungry, to me, it was better than sitting in the apartment all day long. :)