I feel like I was spoiled in college. It seems like every race this season, I’ve woken up well before dawn. And that’s no different today. I wake up at 3:30am for a 6am start. with my usual pre-race breakfast – some bread and black coffee – and then just relax until it’s time.

I hop in a cab and make it to the starting area – just down the road from the airport – in what would usually take forty-five minutes, but due to the early hour and lack of traffic, takes us only about fifteen. I’m pretty early and so I try to just relax and not get caught up in the fact that I’m in Callao at 5am in the dark by myself (it’s not a beautiful neighborhood).

Around 5:10am, I met up with my friend Roberto, who lives and trains in Lima. He’s a fantastic runner himself, having run 2’25 in the marathon and 1’07 in the half, and had been kind enough as to help pace me in this race. After my 1’02 20km race, I knew that I was in shape to PR in the 10k. It had been my goal in my senior year of high school to run under 30 minutes in the 10K, though unfortunately, due to some bad luck (very hot weather at the end of the season when I was trying to run fast), the time never came, despite what I thought was great fitness. And so, after my great 20km, I started looking for a fast 10km at sea level that I could try to really target as a fast, time-trial race. Roberto had told me about this smaller race to benefit the local hospital and the timing ended up being perfect, as it was right before I was planning to fly out of Lima, so I emailed the race director and was invited to come down.

The two of us leave around 5:15am and start jogging out onto the course. Having just seen the course map, it turns out that the route is actually quite familiar, with the majority of the race an out and back on one of the main east-west thoroughfares. I’ve run on this road several times during long layovers in the Lima airport (STRIVErs Noah and Henry might remember the last run of our trip out here). It’s pretty much pancake flat and nearly straight shot out with a quick turn around in a residential neighborhood and then back on the same road. It should be super fast.

Roberto has his garmin – which is good, as we don’t see any KM markers on the route – and we run an easy 5km warmup. He says he’ll try to take me through the first half (5km) in as close to 15’00 as possible. At that point, if there is anyone in front of me, I’ll try to work up to them, and if not, I’ve just got to push as hard as possible through that second half.

As the start nears, a small group gathers in the parking lot of the hospital which is apparently sponsoring the race. There’s probably only about 50 people in the field – I guess 6am on a Wednesday morning will do that – but it seemed to be some kind of special promotional day in the hospital and there were cash prizes, so there were a couple quick looking guys.

We line up on the starting line and the mega-phone sounds and we’re off.

There are the usually payasos that take off like crazy in the first 100m, but within the first minute, Roberto and I are up front, with two other guys running with us. I’m wearing the garmin so that I can have it for the whole race and was shouting out our first few km splits, while Roberto was running by feel. Perfectly.

A 30 minute 10km requires beautifully symmetric 3’00 kilometers (or about 4’50 per mile). For the first 3km, we ran 2’59.9, 2’59.5, and 3’00.5, bringing us to 3km in 8’59.9 – within 0.1 second of perfect pace for 30’00. At this point, we were still a pack of four, with the two other guys tucked in alongside me and Roberto leading the way. I felt incredibly good and relaxed, while looking at the others could tell that they were working much harder than me. I honestly hoped that these guys would be able to hold on until at least 7 or 8km so that I wouldn’t have to run the whole second half alone. I wanted the company and I was almost positive that I could beat them.

Our 4th km was slightly faster at 2’58.5, at which point Roberto and I began to pull away from the other two, probably putting 4 or 5 seconds on them in that kilometer alone. Roberto was breathing hard and did an awesome job accelerating in his last kilometer, his fastest of the day and my fastest up to that point in 2’58.0. We turn into the residential neighborhood, where we pass 5km in 14’56. Roberto slaps me on the back and pulls off the course, while I head back out onto the long, straight-shot all the way home.

I’m running alone now, with only the obnoxious beap of the Garmin every kilometer to keep me company. The two guys from the start are out of earshot at this point and I know this is new territory for me. I’ve never been out this fast in a 10k and so I try to increase my effort, thinking that will probably just maintain my pace.

The increase in intensity turns out to speed me up more than I expect and I cover the next 2km in 5’54 (4’44/mile pace), bringing me to 7km in 20’51 (29’47 predicted finish). I know that all I have to do is maintain pace for these last 3km and I’ll have a huge PR and a sub-30 performance.

But at this level, even one or two seconds per kilometer make a big difference, and that increase in pace has my legs feeling tired amd heavy as I come into the last 3km. I slow down to 2’59.9 on the 8th km (23’51) and I know that I don’t have any more room to slow down. I have to increase intensity again just to maintain this pace which will keep me under 30 minutes. I’m really struggling  at this point, checking my watch and thinking, can I really keep doing this for 5 more minutes? Four and a half minutes? Four?

After what seems like the longest kilometer of my life, the watch beeps and I see I haven’t fatally slowed, as I’d expected, but had maintainted pace at 3’00.2. With one kilometer to go, I only have to run under 3’09 to break 30 minutes and I know I can do it. I try to maintain pace until 9.5km and then just go as hard as I can. I’m trying to turn my legs over fast, trying to find that higher gear, but I can’t quite find it. My legs are so muscularly spent from a pace that’s so much quicker than what I’m used to that I just can’t change gears.

Finally, with the finish line in sight, maybe 300m away, I convince my legs to turn over a bit faster, to drive a bit harder, to push off my toes and lunge towards the line.

I cross the finish line first for the first time in a road race since Boston’s Run to Remember way back in May and, to keep up traditions, promptly collapse in a heap on the ground. The race director is there and babbling at me quickly in Spanish (though, I guess it shows how far my language ability has come in that I can actually understand him, even in my current state). One thing sticks out: “Vienti-nueve, cuarenta y ocho!” 29’48. I’d held on.

I see the second and third placers come in – the two who had started out with me – who finished together in about 31 minutes. Roberto jogged in about 10 minutes later and the four of us cooled down together, chatting as if nothing had happened. As if we hadn’t all just been pushing our bodies to the point of failure, hoping that the others’ would fail before our own, just a few minutes earlier.

One of the most rewarding and inspirational parts of this season has been meeting so many South American runners. These are incredible athletes, often training totally on their own, sometimes without a coach, and usually at ungodly hours of the morning before taking on a gruelling 11 hour workday. Yet, these are often some of the friendliest and most welcoming, optimistic, and hospitable people I’ve ever met (I am almost always invited for a cool-down jog, to come for a run another day, to come live and train in their city, etc…) Meeting these amazing guys makes it worth the bad, tired, penniless, food-poisoning days when I question the process.

Quick Thoughts on the Race:

1. I owe huge thanks to Roberto who took me out perfectly and let me run incredibly relaxed for the first 5km. I’ve never run sub-15 on the roads before and never run sub-15 that relaxed ever.

2. The margin for error at this level is very small. The difference between running 2´59.x and 2’57.x may not look like much on paper, but it felt like a lot at the time. As crazy as it sounds, I think that if I could have run the 6th and 7th kilometers two or three seconds slower, I would have actually been able to run faster overall, with a bigger kick in the last 500m.

3. This pace felt fast. I have really been training for the half marathon, a pace which has been 7-10 seconds slower per kilometer, and have not run very much at this pace. I think that aerobically I actually felt quite good, especially for the first half, but my legs became very muscularly exhausted near 7-8km, which I attribute to a lack of work at this speed.

4. I can’t complain. My 20km PR is (on paper) a better time, but given that this race was added into my schedule fairly late and the lack of specific speed work, I am in no way disappointed. This was a great race, a great PR, a great win. Do I think I can run much faster if I trained more for 10km? Absolutely. But that’ll have to wait for another day…

All in all, this was a great exclamation point to put onto the end of an already fantastic season. And it was pretty awesome to do it in our ballin´ new singlets and in my first race in Perú!

I’ve got one more ‘race’ in my 5 Minute Fundraiser (LINK). Hopefully, that’ll give me another exclamation point and I can start my off-season on a great note!

Splits
2’59.9
5’59.4 (2’59.5)
8’59.9 (3’00.5)
11’58.4 (2’58.5)
14’56.5 (2’58.0)
17’53.8 (2’57.3)
20’51.2 (2’57.4)
23’51.1 (2’59.9)
26’51.3 (3’00.2)
29’48.4 (2’57.1)