Proud to Run 10K Race Recap

Yesterday I ran my first 10K since grade school! The Proud to Run 10k was held on the lakeshore path on Saturday morning. It started at 8:04 (I am guessing that has something to do with gay rights..anyone know?!) so it wasn’t too early of a wake up call for me.

I got up and did the easy 20 min bike ride over to the race and got there with plenty of time to spare. As I stretched and jogged to warm up my legs felt really heavy and tired, not a good way to start a race. Lucky as soon as I started running my legs felt great.

I really tried to run a smart race and not start out to fast. Unfortunately when my watched beeped 8:14 for the first mile I knew that was way to fast for me to maintain. I tried my best to keep up my pace for as long as I could which worked well until mile 3. After that it got a lot harder and I slowed down and took a few 30-45s walking breaks the second half of the race.

I ended up finishing in a great sprint with a time of 55:41 (8:58 pace). My garmin was a mess the whole time or I just did a really bad job of running the tangents because my watch splits were 6.31 miles in 55:49. Mile breakdowns below:

• Mile 1: 8:14
• Mile 2: 8:30
• Mile 3: 8:56
• Mile 4: 8:54
• Mile 5: 9:12
• Mile 6: 9:30
• Last .3 were an 8:21 pace

I was really happy to be done at the end, it was HOT. Over all the race was really well run..it wasn’t a huge race by any means (for Chicago) only 600 or so participants but it was really fun. Lots of people dressed up and where wearing gay pride clothes.

After the race I chugged some water, ate an orange slice and then tried to retrieve my bike from the very overly packed bike rack. It was a mess!

I don’t think I will have any race photos besides this one I snapped of myself at the end. Clearly I was trying to look my prettiest.

Overall Stats were 8/26 in my age group, 65/275 women, and 286th overall.

Happy to have finished a 10k! Anyone else race this weekend?