This was originally posted on blogger.

Today I ran a 10k race! It was my first time racing this distance and I exceeded expectations, running the Berkeley course in 44:54.

That was substantially faster than I had been expecting! In high school, I only ran 5k races and at the start of the season, my times were normally in the 22-23 minute area. 10k is double that, and recently I haven’t done a ton of running, so I was aiming for 50 minutes. So I did pretty well! Around 45 minutes means I was running 7:14 miles throughout, and I placed 62 out of 1290 people in the race. I should give my tandem biking excursions with Dean more credit!

I had a great time and was lucky to have my friends David, Leon, Imon and Leo to support me (even at 8:30am). They gave me a great oomph and found several places throughout the course to come support. We met a few others friends and saw so many athletic folks around Berkeley! I didn’t anticipate anyone joining to watch but was happy to see them around the course. David knows how to motivate distance runners, having done mountain biking himself, and put on quite the show. Leon thinks that the best spectators should get medals (I fondly remember one supporter on Southside who wore a batman suit). I also was roped into the race by Tynan and Catherine – they sadly had a fall halfway through and didn’t get to the end :’(.

The race started downtown, from the Deep South (Berkeley, CA) through campus up till North Side and then finished around the starting line. The last bit few kilometers were extremely hilly, and I saw the front runners of the race steaming down the hills. Honestly, I was tired at the 5k mark, but managed to keep up steam throughout the course. Leo ran alongside me for some of it – we paced together on a track yesterday and he told me that on the uphills I was runing a solid 50-minute pace. The downhills were joyous.

With middle-long distance races, I really feel the true race starts in the last half of the course. The runners have thinned out; people who went hard at the start may begin to burn out. With the hills and sparse mile markings, it became a real mental game. Though my thighs were aching I managed to get through it all and run till the very end.

I love the 10k distance. It’s long enough that you don’t have to sprint and short enough that it’s not brutal. I felt so great after the race would love to train for it more. Leo thinks I could run sub-40 – who knows! It feels good to be part of a large, semi-athletic community and see improvements over time. You’ll see me out there again!