Race Report: Ukrop's Monument Avenue 10k (Todd)

AKA The most painful recovery run every.

For those of you just tuning in, I ran Terrapin Mountain 50K the Saturday before this race.  Sunday I tried to run a short easy recovery run and ended up crying like a baby and limping back to the car after 23 steps.  My quads were shredded.  Wednesday I managed an easy paced trail run, and I thought that my legs might be loose enough to pull off a 10K, so we set off to Richmond.

Saturday morning Alexis and I parked 2 miles away from the start line so we could "warm up" before the race started.  I swear that woman is obsessed with warming up.  During the warm up my left leg still felt a little sore, but it loosened up as we ran.  I was actually feeling pretty good when it was time to queue up in our waves.  I was one wave ahead of Alexis, which gave me a one minute head start.

I felt good but sluggish as I started out.  This was my third year running Monument Avenue, so I knew what to expect from the course, but I had never really raced it hard before.  Last year I was suffering from some sort of Achilles/Shin Splint issue, and the year before I was new to running.  But I'll tell you this:  flat does not mean easy.

At the half way point we make a U-turn and you can see the thousands of people behind you.  There was Alexis, maybe a little more than a minute behind me, and looking stronger than I felt.  By mile four my legs were screaming for me to just stop and sit down for a few more days, and my pace began to decline.  At this point I started looking around for her to be passing me at any minute.

The race actually ends with a little bit of a down hill which was somewhat of a saving grace.  I was able to manage to keep running the whole way, and pull out a PR with a finishing time of 45:35.

This is a great race for any runner looking to PR a 10K, but other than that I'm not overly impressed with the race itself.  Maybe it's hard to do too much with 34,000 runners, but I felt we were treated like cattle at the start and finish lines, with race workers actually yelling at runners to "keep moving" and "get out of the way". I'll take a good local race with 500 or less runners any day, where I can collapse in the shoot without fear of being scolded.