2003 USATF 10 Miler

One last chance to show how slow I am. There are not a lot of reasons to go to
the USATF 10 mile championships. You get nothing for running the race-no goodie
bag or shirt-nada!. You are matched up against mostly very serious runners on a
three loop course where if you're as slow as me you actually get lapped by the
leaders. So why go? I kept asking the question.

As of about 9 am I wasn't positive I was going to run but I thought if I didn't
I would have no benchmark of where I was at the end of the year. The weather
was pretty good also, so I drove over.

This was a course that I knew real well having run close to 100 races there
mostly in the summer. I was hoping to break 82 minutes and figured I would try
and hold 7:45's to 7:50's as long as I could. I ran the first mile with Dean
Shonts and had a 7:46 but I couldn't hold it. Three miles was 24 minutes-5
miles was 41 and you get the idea.

I was slowing down and made a new goal of breaking 84. That became 85 minutes
as the leaders started lapping me between the sixth and seventh miles. The
winners did 52 minutes-my seventh mile was about 58 minutes. I was slowing to
just under nine minutes a mile and was running all alone. There were a few
runners slightly ahead of me and I almost caught one. I knew exactly how far I
had to go and actually ran the last mile pretty well. My finishing time of
84:25 was 17 minutes slower than I had run in 1996 and 5 minutes slower than
1997 where I had gotten hurt and walked almost a mile but I was still happy.

This was yet another case where a race time portended a slower marathon but in
the race that counted the most-I had a time at Philly I can be proud of for the
winter. Before I go to Florida on Wednesday I am planning on signing up for
Shore so I have a nice bullseye at the end of April to shoot for. Now,if I can
just start doing the Saturday ten miles a little closer to Sunday's time. My
legs are so sore today - I guess it was worth it.