Saturday morning I participated in the 9th annual Chattahoochee Challenge 10K. I’ve heard about this race for a while, as people talk about it as one of the best races to qualify for the Peachtree Road Race since it is nice and flat. The weather wasn’t perfect today as it was 40F with a windchill of probably close to 32F, but it didn’t rain during the race, so I consider ourselves lucky!

Getting there, you had to park about a mile down the road from the start in a school and hike it to packet pickup. Thankfully, unlike some of the more local races, they didn’t also give you your T-Shirt before the race and make you lug it around. Lines moved quickly [even the line for the toilets!] and I was in and out with my number in hand in no time. I took the time before the race to jog for a mile or so, and then spent some time banging massaging my knee where it has been sore, hoping it would help. We eventually got lined up and got started about 10 minutes late.

Coach had given me a race plan of taking the first mile easy @ 9:45, then going miles 1-5 at 9:10, and going all out the last one. I was feeling great that day and felt I would have left a lot on the course if I did that, and wanted to see how much I could PR, so kind of tossed the pacing plan to the wayside. I did decide to keep the major theme with it and go for negative splits. I hit the 1 mile mark at 8:30 and decided to keep it at that pace until the 5K mark. For the first 3 miles, I honestly didn’t feel like I was racing. It seemed like just a nice easy jog to me. My average time for the first 5K was 8:30min/mi with an average HR of 173bpm.

Once I hit the 3 mile mark I decided to lift the pace a little bit and see what I had in me. I was still feeling pretty good at this point, and my knee had not bothered me once. I hit mile 4 at 8:04 pace and still felt great so picked it up even more. I’m fairly certain that from mile 3 on, not a single person passed me! Mile 5 saw me at a pace of 7:26. Unfortunately, Mile 5 had the one small hill and me knee decided to start hurting when I hit the hill. I was able to change my stride and have my knee stop hurting for the most part, but it was not pleasant!

As I was running, I noticed in the distance most of the time a guy holding an orange flag. I never knew what he was doing while I was running, but afterwards, I’ve decided he was probably the pacer for people trying to qualify for Peachtree. I started reeling him in after mile 3, and he would slowly get closer each mile. After the pain on the hill I wasn’t sure if I could catch him, but he was close enough to motivate me to sprint the last 0.2m and beat him to the line. As a side note, if he was the pacer, he was 30s slower than qualifying pace!

I came across the line with a time of 50:30. I was thrilled with this time. This is only the 2nd time I’ve done a 10K, my first being last year’s Peachtree Road Race where I went in 58:43. That meant this was a PR by ~8:10. Wow! I realize that it helps that it was because my only other 10K was a few months ago, and it was after I just got up to the distance, but still, I’m going to be happy with this PR for a while :)

After the race, we had to walk up way too many steps to pick up our schwag bags. Unfortunately it was just a cotton t-shirt and not a technical T, but I guess you can’t get those every time. I did score some form of coupon to waffle house, as well as a much needed banana and some sort of chocolaty tasty granola bar. These helped as I hiked the mile back to the parking lot where my car was!

If there was anything negative about this race, it would be that I didn’t qualify for Timegroup A for the Peachtree Road Race today. I missed doing so by 30 seconds. However, that wasn’t a goal of this race – it was to just see how a 10K went since I hadn’t done one in so long. In any event, it’s not a big deal as my time from one of the 5Ks I did last fall already qualifies me for Timegroup A!

All in all, this race was a blast, and I can see myself setting some new PRs here in the years ahead!

If you’re interested in seeing some of the splits & data, here it is [I'm a data junkie, what can I say]:

Overall: 50:30 – 8:01min/mi – 176bpm – 82spm

Miles 0 – 3 – 25:26 (8:29 min/mi) – 173bpm – 82.5spm
Miles 3-6 – 23:06 (7:42 min/mi) – 178bpm – 81.7spm
Miles 6-6.3 – 1:58 (6:31 min/mi) – 185bpm – 82.2spm

1 – 8:27 – 174bpm – 82.9spm
2 – 8:34 – 176bpm – 82.6spm
3 – 8:25 – 170bpm – 82.1spm
4 – 8:04 – 167bpm – 81.9spm
5 – 7:26 – 183bpm – 81.0spm
6 – 7:36 – 184bpm – 82.2spm
6.3 – 1:58 (6:31min/mi) – 185bpm – 82.2spm

You can view pretty graphs & such as well at Garmin Connect