SHeZoni Run - 10K

On Friday I decided that I wanted to run a race and I picked the SHeZoni 10K.  Oddly enough, the title has nothing to do with "she's" and its not a chick race.  It stands Singular Humanitarian and Choice Humanitarian that supplies medical aid and food to Guatemala, Bolivia and Nepal.

It was the First Annual race that took place in Tempe, Arizona on a course that I have run on but never in a race.  (Anytime I see something that says "FIRST ANNUAL" I wonder what happens if they don't do it again next year.)  At registration I asked how many people were registered and there were only 80 people registered for the 5K and 10K run. With a small field I would do well placing in my age group or even better.

It is an out and back course for both the 5K and 10K.  The race started and my first mile was 7:32.  I was hoping for 7:40's for the entire race so I was a little fast (like that's a surprise).  At the halfway for the 5K the majority of the runners in front of me turned back.  There was one guy in front of me...I was in second and first female.  At the turnaround point I was able to see who was behind me and very close was another female.  She overtook me at 3.5 and actually went on to win the race.  At mile 5 I was passed by a guy putting me in 4th with a time of 47:54, a 7:42 pace.

I haven't been training for a 10K with tempo runs and much speed work and the weather is warming up so I didn't know what to expect and being ultra critical of myself, I was a tad disappointed. I have a number of things that I learned from this race

1. Change the Garmin setting to not auto-pause.  The course took us under a road through a tunnel turning the Garmin off.  This caused my overall time and pace to be wrong.  I thought I did better than I really did and that the official time was wrong by 16 seconds.  I was the one that was wrong.
2. I drank at each water stop giving me a HORRIBLE side stitch from mile 4 through the end. I've never had a side stitch that bad.  It's been a while since I've raced and I guess I was still using the marathon race mentality of drinking at every stop. Plus it was warm and I didn't want to get dehydrated.  Looking back I feel like I made a rookie mistake and can't believe I drank a little at the 4 stops.
3. Dress and plan appropriately.  I wore a sleeved shirt and realized it would be too warm. Luckily I have extra running clothes in my car, which happened to be a sleeveless shirt. Wearing sleeveless shirts requires me to use Glide or I chafe.  Since I didn't have any with me, I used lip balm, which worked well in a pinch.

Overall it was a respectable race, I learned some things and had a great workout.

Happy Running!