Meteor 10k

Overcast and 50 degrees in Detroit Michigan makes the weather perfect for running. Almost. There was a brisk headwind for the first half to run of the out and back course used for the Martian Marathon, Half Marathon and Meteor 10k. It was certainly an energy sapper although I hung in there for a 25 minute first 5k. The course is a road course that meanders through a small park valley. This is very nice since they did not allow any cars on the road and there is no crossing traffic to contend with or even hear. Only wind, runners, road , grass and trees all around. The elevation changes were gentle and probably about the same as the Allen Parkway circuit.

The race is pretty well organized, but I unfortunately got in too late to go to the Expo yesterday. The Mizuno technical shirt they gave us is top notch with a neat logo. They had other goodies to purchase as a memento when I went to packet pickup this morning. Since I presumed that the Martian Marathon thongs were not my size, I went for the boxer shorts! The post race food was your basic banana, bagel and more fair. Nothing hot for the half marathoners and marathoners, although the race seemed to have enough participants for this.

The marathon and half marathon started at 8:30 and I was able to watch the start from about 100 yards down the road. Seeing the waves of runners launch was fun. The 10k started at 9:00. I lined up pretty close to the front as it seemed there were less fast runners in this race than our typical Houston road race. Indeed this turned out to be true as the final results showed me 5th out of 24 in the 50-54 age group and 103rd out of about 540 10k runners. The burners were probably mostly in the longer races. There were 4 of us who ran the same pace most of the way, although 2 of them dropped me with 4 miles to go and I dropped one with about a mile to go. I was really hurting the second half as the wind had taken a lot out of me in the first half. However, I knew I was close to a personal best so I embraced the pain in the last mile, especially the last 200 yards. After cross the finish I had a new cool running feeling....a near vomit experience. My watch said 49:09, but I read the initial posted chip time as 49:16. Bummer since my PR is 49:13. Not really a bummer, a great race either way. We'll see what they post online (the final results show 49:06 so it was a PR).

It was fun to run in another part of the country away from all the normal faces and routes of Houston. The HRB club will need to pick a place for us to go outside the Houston area and race together in the fall or winter sometime. That would be cool.