iRun for Kassie Wingerd 10K

I ran the iRun for Kassie Wingerd 10K Sunday morning. A gray and cloudy morning turned into a lovely sunny morning. Besides the sun, there was a slight wind to deal with.  The iRun for Kassie 5K/10K runs is a memorial scholarship run. On the registration sheet it stated, "Kassie Wingerd was diagnosed in 2008, at the age of 10, with Leukemia. She completed treatments in May 2010 but was re-diagnosed in September 2011. Kassie passed away October 24, 2011 at the age of 13. The scholarship will be given to a student who has overcome many struggles throughout their education in Clinton Community Schools; just as Kassie did."

All of the 10K runners were told to line up first in front of the 5K runners and walkers. When the race started, it really didn't matter. The faster 5K runners had already passed me. In the first half mile of the race, I knew that a really fast girl in my age group was ahead of me. I knew that I needed to keep the only other age group runner behind me. Right at the start of the race, she was beside me. Then she started to run in front of me. I was determined to not let her get away. When she got in front of me, I fell in right behind her. I knew once we turned left a subdivision that we were going to be running into a headwind.

When we all turned the corner out of the subdivision, I found myself side-by-side with her. The out-and-back course took us over many rolling hills. Coming out of the subdivision, we started to head up one. When I looked over, the lady beside me was gone. I could hear her breathing behind me. I kept telling myself that I needed to keep her behind me.

Now that the woman in my age group was behind me, I wanted it to keep it that way. In order to do that, I needed to put a gap between us. I mentioned that the course had many rolling hills. After running up a hill, most of the time, the road would flatten out for a while before going up another hill. In between the hills, I started surging. I thought if I could speed up on the flat ground that maybe I could get away from her. That seemed to work for me. I was catching runners in front of me.

On that stretch of country roads, I passed probably 4-5 people. I was really excited. The 5K and 10K runners shared mostly the same course. The 5K course had a turnaround at halfway. The 10K runners continued running straight down the road. When I passed the 5K turnaround, I was running by myself. Probably all of the runners I just passed were in the 5K race. I didn't want to look behind me to see how far the next runner was, so I continued my surge strategy on the flat parts of the road.

When I finally saw the 10K leader running my way, I was thrilled. That meant it was almost time to turnaround. The best part about running an out-and-back course is you can see how many people are in front of you. While I was passing the lead runners, I was counting them too. Before hitting the turnaround point, I was in 10th place overall and third overall woman.

I grabbed a cup of water on the turnaround and looked at my watch. My watch said 27 something. I was thinking that was slow. I figured it must have been the hills slowing me down. As I ran down the road, the woman in my age group was running my way. I had at least a 20 second lead on her. I was thinking that she could negative split her second half and run me down. That thought made me push myself. I was in a good spot and I didn't want her to take it away from me.

Passing the 5K turnaround table, the girls working the station told me I was almost done. Since I don't run with music anymore, I was listening for their voices as I continued down the road. About 15-20 seconds later, I heard the girls telling someone "good job." I didn't know for sure if it was the 10K lady behind me or the 5K walkers. But I didn't want to know. When I passed the sign that read 5 miles, I really picked up the pace. I only had 1.2 miles left, I needed to finish strong. I ended up catching up to a bunch of walkers. I ran to the center of the road to avoid colliding into them.

The last part of the race took us from the road to the town's high school track. Turning into the driveway that lead to the track, I caught up with about 5 walkers. When I got beside them, two of the girls started running. The other three girls moved out of my way and continued walking. I passed a few more walkers heading towards the finish line. When I crossed the finish line, I didn't realize that I did. I left my watch running for a few more seconds. I thought the balloon arch that was behind the finish line was the finish line. The arch was set up for us to go under to have the volunteers take off our bib number tags. I stopped my watch under the balloon arch. When I read my watch it said 51:42. I couldn't believe it. According to that time, I set a new 10K PR by 1:24. Since I didn't stop my watch at the actual finish line, I took off two seconds to my race time: 51:40, (PR lowered by 1:26). I figured that was how long it took me to run from the finish line to the balloon arch. The results will be posted online today or tomorrow. Once I see my finishing time. I will adjust everything out.

I finished the race somewhere around 51:40. That placed me 10th overall, 3rd woman overall and 2nd in my age group. After I drank two bottles of water, grabbed a banana and started walking toward the stairs at the end of the track, the other woman in my age group just on the track running towards the finish line. I couldn't believe how big of a gap I put between us after the turnaround.

I'm very excited for the new 10K PR. My previous PR was set in 2011 with a time of 53:06. I was close to beating it last year a couple of times. I thought that I never lower it again. I'm thankful that everything fell in place. I will keep on training to hopefully lower it again.