Taggart VanEtten is an elite age group athlete. He shared his first 10k race report with us. Enjoy!
When I drove into Canton on Saturday morning it was dark, raining and about 34 degrees outside, the winds were around 10 mph. I’ve come here many times to train with friends and run races. However, today was my first 10-kilometer (6.2 miles) race.
The night before I only slept about 3-4 hours, I wasn’t nervous for the run, but for some reason my brain just wouldn’t shut off. When I was warming up I felt normal.
Only about forty people signed up for the mile, 5K and 10K races. This kind of brought down my vibe, because while warming up and during races I love feeding off other’s excitement. For some reason I couldn’t get as pumped up as usual for the race. However, I felt good and was confident in myself.
After hearing about the hills later into the route I changed my race plan. I chose to go out quicker for the first two miles then have a slower middle and drop the pace for the last third. I’ll be honest, those hills were testing, but I got through it.
I came through 5K in 17:40 and felt okay. After fighting the elevation gain around the lake, I finally came back to flat road. The closing stretch came and the course was a little long but that’s fine with me.
Instead of 6.20 miles it was 6.33 miles. It may not seem like a lot of difference in mileage, but that added about forty seconds to my overall time. I finished the race in 36:21.
According to the metrics on my watch I ran 10-kilometers in 35:49 (My goal time was 35 minutes). I wasn’t thrilled about the time, but I pretty much trained through the race.
I only let up on Friday’s sessions and I have only been running 20-25 miles per week. I felt as if I left mostly everything on the course and it was a good test of fitness, not every effort is going to be record setting though it is important to notice what I gained from this run.
Remembering that Rome was not built in a day is vital. All in all, this 10K was a great building block for collegiate nationals approaching in 40 days.