ChrisStreeter
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The North Face Endurance Challenge 10k

December 09, 2008 —

Over the weekend, I participated in a trail running 10k. I did the 10k distance, which turned out to be more difficult than my previous trail run. This course wasn't as aggressive as the Dip Sea trail, with a sloping 1000 foot elevation gain, followed by a steep downhill back to the start, where we also finished.

I opted to do the 10k distance, and convinced my sister to also do the race, which was her first race. And I was informed about the race by some CrossFit friends who all did the 50k distance. Saul, Samantha and Dustin are pretty crazy for doing it, but accomplished the monstrous achievement. Saul wrote up the summary from their race over at the Peninsula CrossFit site. He also has some great endurance training ideas there too. So congrats to them and to my sister.

I've done the 10k distance a number of times before, though this was my first 10k trail race (though the Stintson 12k pretty much counts). I really think that I wasn't as prepared physically as I should have been. My legs were still sore from my CrossFit workout the Wednesday before, where I did Barbara. So I ended up walking up the hill quite a bit more than I wanted to. But I'm pretty sure I made up some time on the downhill. The official results got posted, and my time was 55:53.7 minutes, for an average pace of 9:12 minutes /mile. This was good enough for 35th overall out of 255, 17th of 46 in my age division (ages 21-29), and 31st of 119 of all men in the 10k race. So I'm not fully happy with my result since I know I could have done better a day later and with more rest. However, Amy killed the race where she completed the course with a time of 1:03:25.6 minutes for 10:26 pace. I need to start training more to make sure I stay ahead of her pace.

Update: My split for the course was 36:39 to the aid station, which was at the top of the hill, 3.45 miles in, and then 19:13 from there to the finish (the final 2.75 miles). This gave me a 10:37 pace up the hill and a 6:59 pace down the hill to the finish. I really should have walked less going up the hill.