I Won My First Road Race Yesterday
Yesterday, I haphazardly participated in a 12-mile race. I wasn’t expecting much of it, and I was running it just to get a workout in.
It was a day where it was 59 degrees, and perfect running conditions. I wasn’t confident in my fitness at the time. During the summer, I had to try really hard to run really slow. It was an unusually hot summer where it was just incredibly hot and humid on most days, and 6 minute miles, which would usually be easy for me at the peak of my fitness, suddenly became very difficult.
I knew what I was capable of before, and it’s not like I was a drastically different person than I was six months ago.
The first four miles of the race, I took it out steady. I controlled my effort and had two guys gap me by 20 to 25 meters. They were still in sight, but at times they just got farther and farther. In the past, I would have forced myself to stick with them and overexert myself, but I kept my effort controlled and didn’t surge when they gapped me.
I was running my own race. And I wasn’t going to let comparing myself to the people around me dictate my performance.
At mile 4, I caught up to the two guys and took the lead. After that, the majority of the race was downhill, so it felt easy after that, but it wouldn’t have felt easy if I hadn’t taken it steady on the first four miles.
I would begin to clip 5:30 miles. I obviously felt better and warmed up after the first four miles.
People I recognized in the city started cheering me on. I wasn’t sure how much farther behind the second-place runner was, but I didn’t look back. At the moment, I gauged how far behind he was by the time people who cheered for me and people who cheered for him.
Otherwise, I was focused on winning my own race. It’s not like I didn’t fear someone passing me the whole rest of the race, but I didn’t fixate on it.
I felt great until mile 10, but after that, I had to be mentally strong to maintain the same effort and not slow down significantly.
I would eventually win the race in a time of 67:15, averaging 5:36 pace the entire race.
