Texas 10 Series: College Station

Sunday morning in College Station was the first of seven 10 mile road races to be contested across the state in 2014 as part of the Texas 10 Series. I was excited for the series as soon as I discovered it on the Run On! Race Calendar. Actually experiencing the first race this weekend I have gained even more excitement for this series. The event was extremely well organized, had amazing volunteers & police officers, an excellent course, fantastic announcing, and was great fun for every runner. I personally appreciated that the race organizers had decided to give the lead woman in the race a lead bicycle as well as the overall leader. This proved to be invaluable as we closed the final mile and he cleared a nice path for me to the finish line amongst the 5 Miler finishers. The water stations were awesome and proved to be fantastic cheering sections out on the lonely windier back stretch of the loop. Those young ladies pumped me up to push even harder!



The Start!

As many posted on the Texas 10 Series Facebook page it was really just the weather that got in the way of the event reaching perfection. All the runners met the strong wind from miles 2.5 to 4.5 on the 5 Mile loop that we repeated twice. I decided not to look at my Garmin splits once I hit the wind because I was feeling great and had moved into second place overall (1st woman). This was a smart idea since I might have discouraged myself if I saw the 6:21 mile I split for mile 5. I felt the best I have in quite a while on the second loop after I took my GU at Mile 6. I pressed hard into the wind to finish in 1:01:15 as the 1st Woman and 2nd Overall. My Halfway split was 30:29 so I was happy to have maintained pace pretty well the second loop. I was most pleased with my last 2 miles into the wind being faster than the first loops windy miles.

Splits:

1^st Loop: 5:54, 5:49, 5:59, 6:13, 6:21

2^nd Loop: 6:04, 5:53, 6:06, 6:10, 6:16

Putting up the North Texas "Eagle Claw" as they announced me as the University of North Texas Cross Country Coach

One of the biggest accomplishments I feel I had this weekend was being mentally tough on Saturday evening. With my athletes we talk about mental preparation for every race and how you cannot allow how you feel on your pre-meet or even warm-up the day of the race deter you from the goals you have outlined for yourself. Saturday afternoon I had gotten a pretty bad headache that manifested into a stomach ache by the time I was able to sit down to dinner at 8:30pm. I didn’t eat too much and felt pretty gross. Instead of letting this deter me I got chocolate milk and went straight to bed. I woke up feeling much better and for me there’s nothing oatmeal and a Starbucks coffee can’t overcome on race morning. How great I felt during the race made the night before seem like a distant memory. I was glad I had not panicked just because I wasn’t feeling how I wish I felt less than 12 hours before my race. The body is often tougher than we think especially if we’ve trained our mind to help us push the body to do what we want it to do. #FindYourStrong

Next Race in the Texas 10 Series: Boerne, TX 3-30-14 http://www.texas10series.com/interior.cfm?pg=7