7:56 p.m. - 2007-09-02
Round 2
Northwest Community Healthcare Buffalo Grove Stampede 10K

Where: Buffalo Grove,IL
time: 8am
weather conditions: Sunny, clear and 68
surface:60% asphalt, 40% gravel path

Pretty much a stroll in the park. (literally) The day didn't get off to quite the start I'd hoped. The motel I stayed at didn't break out the continental breakfast til 7am. The race started at 8 and I still needed to pick up my race packet and stand in line at the tent handing out the timing chips. I figured I'd hit a grocery store on the way and pick up a banana and a muffin to get me through the jog. The only store I saw was a Dominick's and the damn thing wasn't open yet. That was a litlle surprising. I live in a little college town out in the cornfields and our grocery stores are all open 24 hours. Oh well! So I forged on to the race sight hoping to at least score a bottle of Gatorade. Luckily some health food place was just loading up a table with bananas and bagels when I got there.
After the breakfast harvest, packet picker-upping and timing chip wait, I headed back to the truck with my treasures and took care of business.
This race had a few more people in it than the last one. Maybe 400 or so. There was also a 5K and 5K walk going off after us. It was also my first dealings with a timing chip.
The run itself was pretty uneventful. I'd told myself just to view it as a training run and take a pace I'd be comfortable with. First couple miles were at about a 10:20 pace. Last couple were 9 somethings. When I did my 7 mile jog at the end of July, I'd tried to pace myself similarly. Not by picking out a specific time but just falling into a comfort zone and keeping it there. It's amazing how much my comfort zone has changed in the last month just doing my thrice weekly half hour jogs. I probably had a chance to break an hour but didn't realize how close I was as I approached the finish. Since I'd situated myself at the back of the pack at the start, the race clock didn't accurately reflect my actual time. When I passed through the finish, the clock read somwhere just short of 1:02.
It wasn't til I got home and checked the race results online that I knew my official time was 1:00:48. Even if I'd known I was that close I might not have been able to push through it. I felt fine and probably could have gone on and done 10 miles. But I didn't have a lot of juice left for a burst of speed. However, the results exceeded my expectations. I'm pretty pleased with myself at the moment.

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