Impromptu 10 Mile Coming Up!

This upcoming Sunday, I'm doing the "Goldy's Run 10 Mile" with my wife:

My long treadmill runs from this winter will be put to the test on a course along the river with decent hills:

That elevation chart is not right. And miles 2-7.5 are on my normal training routes.

I have NO real goals for the race. I'll just sort of see where my endurance is as with this early-season distance race. (It's been 9 years since my last spring 10 mile.) I'm thinking that I can/should run around 6:15s, which would be a 1:02:30 finish.

Here's a bit of me overthinking this 10 mile race:

I've done nine 10-mile races over the last 10 years, between 59:05 and 1:03:05. It's easy to argue that my fastest 10 mile should be taken out, because that was when I was STRICTLY following Coach Jen's workouts. And I could even take out the 2nd faster 10 mile which was the year after being coached when I looked back and used some of the same workouts leading up to that 10 mile. Also, I can throw out my slowest as it was part of the "Loony Challenge" and I had super heavy legs from racing a 5K and 10K the day before. So that puts my 6 "normal" 10 mile races between 1:01:41 and 1:02:44 - that's 6 races within 63 seconds, or within 6.3 seconds/mile. That's relatively consistent.

If I'm able to hold 6:15s for this race, that will be between my 6 "normal" 10-mile finishes: I have 3 faster and 3 slower.

But this course has some brutal (for me) hills, so I'm really not staking any of my mental well-being on my results at this race. I'll just go "see what I can do." (Big downhill at mile 1, and big uphill to mile 2. Then just "rollers" over the parts I'm really familiar with. Then a big downhill from 7-8, and some nasty uphills after that around 8.5, with a final short steep hill right at mile 9 before a pretty flat sprint to the finish.)

Also, the results show fewer top runners at this race over the years. If I were to run 1:02:30, I would have been 8th overall last year, 15th in 2017, and 17th in 2016. So I could end up going out hard because I could be near the front. I will NOT be winning (as the winners lately have been decently sub-60), but being near the front tends to make me go out harder than I normally would if there were 100 people in front of me.

Anyway, I'm just looking forward to a fun (hard) 10 mile along the river that lets me end on the 50-yard line of TCF Bank Stadium on the U of M campus! Should be fun! Back with a training update tomorrow.