Frigid 5 10k - January 11, 2009

This race marks my new venture into winter racing.  I figure I would be training outside in this madness they call winter in Minnesota anyway, so I might as well race in it also.  This is my first race in 3 months since I ran Chicago.  The race took place on the state fairgrounds in Falcon Heights.  The weather was not too bad -14 degrees and cloudy with minimal wind.

I had no real time goal for this race other than to run competitively.  I was having tightness in my calf muscles all week and about halfway through this one I felt them start to cramp up.  It made the run a bit less enjoyable and probably hurt my time a bit, but nothing overly serious.  The course was 4 laps around the fairgrounds but in the winter the grounds look almost unrecognizable.  My first mile was my slowest.  After that I improved my pace which probably led to the cramping as I wasn't used to running this tempo for a while.  The course had plenty of salt dumped on it so it wasn't too slippery.  Actually had some puddles we had to avoid.  I finished with a time of 45:14 (7:17/mile) good for 6th overall among 58 runners and 2nd of 6 in my age group.  My time was about 2.5 minutes slower than the 10k I ran last June.

http://www.tslevents.com/TSL/Event/Results.aspx?EID=90