El Taverna 10 miler (16km)

I got up at 5am this morning and made myself some breakfast (a weetbix and milk) and then went back to bed until 7am.  At 7am I got up got dressed and then race walked down to the start as my warm up.  The start was about 3km away from where we live.   It was quite nippy this morning and when I got to the start I still had 15mins mucking around and quickly cooled again.

After chatting to the other walkers for a little bit and jittering about to keep warm we were finally taken down to the start.  7.45 am for the walkers and 8.30am for the runners.  With little formality we were given the count down and we were off.

Heading up onto the railway reserve, as I knew it has such a climb I held back a little as I figured there was no point using up all my energy on the first 3km and that I could easily pick up the time on the down hill section.  As we headed from the road onto the track my watch beeped......"bugger I thought, it was still set on 500m auto record" so I fiddled around with my watch and set it to 1km....thinking it would auto correct.  No it didn't, it started the lap scoring from that point but my watch would bleep at me in between saying true to its original settings.  Oh well I was not going to bother to much about it as it would still give me my distance and time, the splits were here nor there for this race and it was handy when I got a little message telling me what my last 1km split was.

I was feeling great and when we reached the down hill I decided to let fly and use it to my advantage.  The course uses part of the Half Marathon course and some extras thrown in too.  I went through 5km at 30:44 The section that takes us out to Monarco is probably the worst part.  The road has a bad camber and is very pitted, but it is the same for all of us.  As we loop out of Monarco we hit the 10km mark, I went through at 1:01:25 .... its my fastest 10km time in a wee while.  My body was feeling good, no aches and pains, breathing was under control...all in all I was feeling strong.  I looked a head and saw that Wendy was about 500m in front of me and figured that she has slowed as I was pretty sure she was at least 800m earlier.  So I picked up the pace (so it felt) and put chase.

Pushing hard as we hit the main road in Richmond, 1km to the finish and tried hard to pick up the pace.  I wanted to beat my time from two years ago.  I had finished in 1:48 and I felt confident that I would finish around the 1:40 mark.  Lucky for me the traffic lights changed in my favour just as I came to them and I didnt have to waste time waiting for a safe time to cross, I pushed hard for the last 100m to finish in 1:39:28......a much need confidence boost as that is an avg of 6:09 per km.

This is a little video taken by my hubby as I passed by our house.  Its taken from our camera so its not the best quality.

Here are my lap splits - a little confusing as I mixed up the first 500m.
Eltravena 10miler by kyisis at Garmin Connect - Details