Austin, Texas, Statesman CAP10K

I lined up with 14,300 runners on Sunday morning here in Texas for an 8am start of the annual 10km. The forecast was rain, thunderstorms and 20-degree heat, or  20-degrees cold if you live in Texas. Thankfully the rain stayed off and instead we had mist adding to the humidity. With my company sponsoring the event and my estimated run time of 39-minutes I got in the first corral and to my surprise found myself directly behind the elite runners, the sub 30-minutes people. After the Star Spangled Banner was performed on the starting stage we had around 30 seconds and we were off straight up to the Congress building on top of the hill setting a theme for the event. Soon after the one kilometre climb we started a timed King of the Hills section for a round a mile with live music to cheer us on our way. With only miles being marked in the USA events and not kilometres it seems to take for ever to the next marker. Three miles came, roughly equivalent to Parkrun distance, but I was off the pace covering the 5km in 20 minutes. I understood the second half was more down than up although I must have missed the down as I entered the “why am I doing this zone”. At around 5-miles I adopted the survival running tactic, if my legs keep going round then I must get there in the end! Six mile marker, just 300-metres to go, if the finish was in sight I wasn’t looking, there was only one thing on my mind “I want this to stop”. Done.

After about 2-litres of water I was able to communicate and share the “experience” – maybe next year now I know the course. ……..

Hot, humid, hilly and hard – 40-mins 37-s, 95th overall, 5th in my age group, third qualifier for my company and the company came second out of the 37 entered.

Job done.