It’s kind of nice that I so often run races without any expectations.  It’s even more exciting when I have a good race!

Today I ran the Cherry Pit 10-Miler — a local alternative to the Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Run in DC, also held today.

I ran the Cherry Blossom race once, and it was nice (though it rained that year!). I’m just as happy running my club’s version. It takes about 15 minutes to get to get there,  rather than at least an hour. And I don’t have to deal with the Metro and crowds. Plus today, I waited in line for less than five minutes for REAL restrooms. When I raced in DC the port-o-pot lines were so long that I didn’t get a chance to go before the race!

Our little race (less than 400 finishers) starts just south of Annapolis, but the surrounding area quickly changes from residential to farmland.  There’s beautiful scenery, I love running past the horses and cows. And we had a perfect day. The sun was shining, and it was probably in the mid-50s or low 60s when we started running.

I, of course, was a tiny bit overdressed (capri tights and long sleeve tech shirt layed under my race team singlet), but I was comfortable with pushed-up sleeves once it started warming up.

There was a bit of a tragedy just before we started. We went outside to line up, and my beloved Garmin wouldn’t turn on! A friend of mine said that happened to him once. Apparently if it’s being charged and there is an interruption in the power, it will shut itself down. I had it charging overnight, and didn’t turn it on until we lined up since we waited indoors.  He couldn’t remember what to do to fix it, so I had to run Garminless. (It’s fine now, I just had to look up the reset sequence.)

Luckily, I’m a gadget dork and I had backup — my iPod with Nike+. Unfortunately, it’s not always the most accurate  tracking mileage. Sometimes it tracks way too long, especially when I’m running slow. Lately I’ve been coming up short. It’s usually happy with my race pace  (well, my 5K race pace) — so I was hoping for the best!

It was helpful to have the timer … but I have no splits. I couldn’t even mentally do them because mile two was placed wrong — it was more like 1.5. We are positive we weren’t running seven minute miles!

The other markers seemed about right. We hit mile three at about 28 minutes. Not bad, not bad. Mile four was around 37. I didn’t catch my time at mile five, but it was well under 50 minutes, which would be in line with my previous 10-mile PR. I wondered if I could keep it up! (Also, if those mile markers were right!)

I kept hitting the miles at good times. When I had two miles to go, I pretty much knew I was looking at a new PR. And this is a hilly race!

I kept moving, and was feeling good.  There was little twinge in my hip flexor (which is not unusual), but fortunately mild. And a little achilles pain — likely due to the slope of the roads. But  not bad enough to slow me down.

I know at least once I accidentally paused my timer. I wondered how far off I was from the race clock. But the numbers were still good when I crossed the finish line.

Official time: 1:35:02

Previous 10-mile PR: 1:40:12

Now my first thought was that the course was short.  I checked with a couple people with functional Garmins, and it was spot on. My iPod didn’t do too badly today either,  with 10.14.

Awesome.  I had no idea I could carry a 9:30 pace for 10 miles!