Lost Dutchman 10k Race Report – 2/15/2009

So far I haven’t done any of the local races I had been considering, for a variety of reasons. But I did end up registering for the Lost Dutchman 10k, which was this morning. I have to admit that the main reason I decided to do this race, even though it didn’t really fit with my training schedule, was because of the opportunity for another medal. I’m already addicted to medals and from what I’ve seen so far its rare to earn a medal for a distance less than a half marathon. Other than at Disney races that is. I’ll have to write about Disney soon. And yes, I still haven’t posted a report from the Rock ‘n’ Roll 1/2. I have drafts started, but just need to finalize it before posting.

Troy’s watching the Daytona 500 right now so I can’t play the PS2 until the race is over in about another 2 1/2 hours. So I’m taking the opportunity to write about the Lost Dutchman now instead of adding it to my ever increasing to-do list.

The Lost Dutchman actually has five different race lengths available: a full marathon, 1/2 marathon, 10k, 8k trail run, and 2 mile fun run. The 10k started at 8:00am, and I had an hour long drive to get to Apache Juntion so I woke up around 5:40 and left the house around 6:15. By the time I got to the park where the race was starting and finishing, cars were parking way out along the street. I turned my Garmin on during the walk back to the car and it was about 3/4 of a mile from the car to the park. So I used the walk as my warm-up. Then I checked my bag, used the restroom, stretched and it was time to start.

The race was an out and back with a couple turns at the beginning then a long straight stretch. I thought it was a flat course, and I guess for the most part it was. There were quite a few small slopes that I wasn’t expecting, but nothing that really gave me much trouble. I tried to keep jogging through the two water stations that I stopped at. I was able to get down a few gulps of water, but also spilled a lot of water over myself. I’ll have to keep working on how to drink and run. We were running into the wind on the way out and with the wind on the way back which was nice. I was feeling pretty good for the last couple miles except that I started to get the weird tingly feeling in my left foot again.

I discovered four pet peeves during the race:

1. People who sing out loud to their music, especially when they can’t really carry a tune and don’t know all the lyrics.
2. People who wear their music so loud that I can hear it. (Not as bad as number 1, but still rather annoying.)
3. People who wear a running watch that continually beeps at odd times. (I suspect she was using watch to keep pace.)
4. People who ask others on the course what time it is. If it’s that important, just get your own darn watch!

 As I mentioned above, there was the opportunity for a medal at this race. Medals were awarded to the first 300 finishers in the 10k. Because of the out and back course and the hills, I could see a lot of people in front of me. I was pretty worried but luckily placed high enough to receive a very nice medal. I like the cutout details along the top. Also, it’s hard to see in the graphic, but there are gold sparkles in the pot of gold and on the cactus. They had unofficial results posted at the finish area. My time was 1:01:16 which is just under a 10 minute pace. I guess the adrenaline of the race helped me run a bit faster than usual.

After crossing the finish line and getting my medal, I took a very short walk break before starting to run again. I wanted to get in at least 8 miles for my long run this weekend. I ran almost all the way to my car and back and also did a few laps around the parking lot. I ended up doing 2.6 extra miles and according to my Garmin my pace was 10:10. I’m a bit surprised by that because I know I started slow and I wasn’t really pushing myself during the extra miles. Next week I’m hoping to do a 10 mile run as my last long run before leaving for Walt Disney World.

One really neat thing I saw at the finish area was that they seemed to be printing custom finisher shirts. There were about six different sets of graphics/text and you could choose what you wanted on the front and the back of the shirt. The post-race refreshments were decent and there was plenty of water. I grabbed a bag of chips, pretzels, two orange wedges and 1/2 a breakfast burrito. There was also granola which I skipped.

Overall I thought the race was very well organized and if the dates are right I might participate again next year, although I don’t know yet which length I’d do. My only small gripe is that the race wasn’t chip timed. Instead they had a system where the runners were corraled into a single file line after crossing the finish line and we had to hand over the bottom part of our race number bib to record our time. I’m pretty sure this is the first race I’ve done that was timed like this. But I knew it wasn’t chip timed going in and since I wasn’t trying for a 10k PR it wasn’t that big a deal.

I just checked and the race results are posted. Looks like 1:01:16 is my official time. I placed 22/46 in my age division and 112/322 for females. If my math is right, I was the 245th finisher.