TC 5K & 10 Mile

Friday afternoon, Eric and I went to the TC Marathon Expo and decided on the whim to run the 5K on Saturday. I didn’t need the race to get to my 40 races this year but I want to see the logistics of Sunday morning and what better way than run a Saturday race.  After driving to the airport at midnight to pick Eric’s brother, Phil, we got up kind of early to head over to the Capitol for our 5K race. 

TC 5K

We start and finish at the same spot so we dropped off Mom and Phil and went to the starting corral. This race was surprising a good one for me. The first mile is almost entirely up a big hill. My first mile was barely under 13 minutes at 12:50. Mile 2 was a little faster at 12:41. Mile 2 is mostly flat. Mile 3 runs down the hill that I ran up for Mile 1 so this was my fastest mile at 12:07. I haven’t ran a 12:07 mile in a very long time so that made me feel awesome. Overall my time was 38:30…my fastest 5K this year.

TC 10 Mile

Another early start for us as my race started at 7. Well my corral started closer to 7:15. We parked at CenterPoint Energy’s River location parking lot. Thank God Eric can park there as parking anywhere in the area was over $40 since it was also Vikings game day. We quickly walked to the starting area so I could us the porta-potty before the race. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this race. I knew it started with a great downhill but after that it was a 5 mile climb to Summit Ave. Oh and it was raining…hard. 

The Start
The start was on downtown streets, past the Guthrie Theater and Mill City Museum and down the long hill to the river bottoms. I really like the first 2 miles. My pace doesn’t reflect it but I was having fun. Mile 3 was the long up hill to Franklin Ave. bridge. It was over an 80-foot climb. And it was the start of the 5 miles of climbing. 

The Middle
Once we got to the Franklin Ave. bridge, we were on the official marathon race course. It was at this point we started to have spectators. Prior to this we were alone. Somehow I managed to have a speedy mile 4, it was on par with my first mile. Miles 5-7 were just awful. I walked a lot. It seemed like we were always running up hill. I walked one hill during mile 7 because my legs were toast by then. 

The Finish
We finally made it to Summit Ave. with the nice rolling hills. I continued to run intervals but shortened the run portion. It must have worked as mile 8 was much faster than miles 5-7. Mile 9 slowed again, I’m not sure why. There was a hill but not a big one. Mile 10 is what I waited for. The downhill finish. The same last mile from the 5K the day before. I didn’t run it in 12:07 like the day before, but it was still one of my fastest miles, which is amazing since it was mile 10. My time after mile 10 was 2:17:07…but like usual, the course was long. 

My official finish time was 2:18:24.