Cabin Fever Reliever 10k

Sticking with my recent trend, I decided to run the Cabin Fever Reliever about 3 hours before the race. I went back and forth on running it the day before and figured I'd just decide when I woke up on race morning. I'd run that day regardless, so it was just a matter of whether it would be an easy long run or a 10k race turned into a long run. The race is only about 10 minutes from my house on country roads.

Post-race photo op in a high school cafeteria

I had low expectations for my performance, but it's a low-key race so I figured I could run 7:00+ pace and win overall female. My mileage has been 55-70 for months, so I'm not out of shape but I have no long or even medium workouts under my belt (I've been doing short workouts like 400s and 1:00 hill repeats). Plus, Jon was super sick and Albani had just gotten over it, so wasn't sure I'd be full strength. My running buddy Paul was also running the 10k and while we warmed up together I mentioned that I was worried my race pace would start with a 7 instead of a 6. He also wasn't sure where he was at, and we both wanted to run by effort, start conservatively and negative split, and figured we would likely be together since we have been really close in recent workouts.

At the start, I eased out comfortably and was quickly in first female position for the 10k. My friend Casey was running the 20k, which does the 10k course twice, and was a little ahead of me as expected (this was also why I ran the 10k and not the 20k!). Paul and I settled in together and the beginning felt easy. When our watches beeped mile 1, Paul told me it was under 7:00 and I said "no, don't tell me splits!", hah! But that did give me a little boost because it felt very maintainable.

Our effort gradually increased and as usual in the 10k I got to halfway feeling like I couldn't do the same thing again but knowing that I could. I also felt really glad I wasn't running the 20k this year! I have run the 20k twice at this event and it's never the greatest to pass through the finish and go back out to run the same course a second time.

Around mile 4

By mile 4 I felt like Paul was stronger than me but told myself to hang onto him as long as I could. "It's exponentially easier with someone" is what I always tell myself in those situations (or, "It's exponentially harder alone" when I'm being pessimistic). I stayed with him and around 4.5 I told him that I thought he felt better than me but I was going to hang on as long as I could. Less than a minute later he said, "Sara, I don't feel so good"...proof that we often don't judge the way others feel correctly! He told me to go ahead and dropped off rapidly, so I pushed on. I ended up feeling really strong the last mile. I could see Casey and 4 men ahead of me, so tried to pull them in, though I don't know that I actually did.

I ended up finishing 1st female in the 10k and 2nd overall person (3 of the men ahead of me were in the 20k), in 42:03. My mile splits on my Garmin were 6:51, 6:36, 6:35, 6:36, 6:42, 6:36 (6:24 final 0.3). I ran super even after a conservative start, because mile 5 has a lot of incline and I looked at another runner's grade-adjusted pace and it subtracted 6 seconds, meaning my effort was 6:36 on that mile! Overall GAP took off 4 seconds/mile average on the rolling course. Paul was only 7 second behind me; he said he had a brief pity party then got back on pace. Casey won overall in the 20k!

Happiness is reality minus expectations, so since I had zero expectations of running faster than 7:00 I was happy with my paces. I'm in a weird place because I'm far from my PRs but I still enjoy racing and can aim to nail pacing and win small races. It makes it hard for me to have time goals though!

I made the race into a 14 mile day for my long run for the week. I'm jumping in workouts with my friends, running long every Saturday, and consistently putting in mileage, but it's all pretty unstructured. I will likely decide some more races to run a day (or a few hours) before soon!

Race results are here. My first race of 2025!