ENDURrun Stage 6: 10K Time Trial

After a good night’s sleep, I felt ready to face the next stage of the ENDURrun today. I actually woke up about 5 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off; it was nice to wake up naturally. I got up, made coffee, and breakfast, which today was a whole wheat bagel with peanut butter and banana.

As I was eating my breakfast, I took a look at the cumulative results to this point. My cumulative time was 11:03:40 for the first 5 stages. Many months ago, I decided that my goal for this whole week would be sub 16 hours. Taking this into consideration, I had 4:56:20 to complete the final 2 stages (a 10K and a marathon) and still meet my goal. With this information, I decided that if I ran a 50 minute 10K today, I would still have 4:06:20 for the marathon, which is still possible. Last year I did the marathon in 4:08:41. My best marathon is 3:51:28 (Mississauga Marathon 2011) and I ran the Waterloo Marathon in 4:03:09 this spring. Hopefully, I have enough left in me to run a decent marathon tomorrow.

We left the house, stopped by Lloyd’s house in Conestogo briefly to see if anyone needed a ride to the start line in Elmira and we were on our way. This race is a point to point course, so it starts at a park in Elmira and finishes right in front of the race director’s house. The post-race food, massage tables, etc are set up in his backyard, waiting for us upon our return from the race route.

This stage was another time trial, so the runners all start at different times and then came in to the finish area fairly close together. Today, I was passed by 3 runners and I passed 3 as well.

I finished today’s stage in 50:48, so I was a bit slower than I wanted to be and well over a minute slower than last year, but this still leaves me with 4:05:32 to run tomorrow’s marathon and meet my goal of sub 16. It’ll be tough to do and I’m not 100% confident that I’ll be able to do it, but I will certainly try. My concern at this point is the fact that I’ve run all the road stages in more time than last year and this final stage is road. But, as I was discussing this with a fellow ENDURrunner today, it was pointed out to me that the trail stages were also the longest stages so far, so I’ve actually run the longer stages faster than last year and tomorrow’s stage is the longest of them all. Perhaps I have a chance after all.

And now, some photos:

My food photo looks a little sad today, but the food was quite good! In this photo there is orange hummus on a slice of bread, a piece of cantaloupe, a fruit pancake, a tuna sandwich, and some fruit salad.

Tonight, we will attend the barbeque to celebrate the last night before the final stage. I am looking forward to our wonderful dinner with the amazing company of the other runners, the volunteers, as well as their family and friends.