For the second year in a row, last Sunday May 15, 2011 I ran in the Santa Monica Classic 10K race, an event benefiting the environmental organization Heal the Bay. I finished this year’s race 28 seconds slower than last year’s race and exactly 2 minutes slower than the previous 10K I had run last month. In fact, this was my second worst time for a 10K so far. I was a little bit disappointed, but actually at the start of the race I had expected to do worse. My training leading up to this race was sporadic. I didn’t even run at all during the week prior to the event. I’d been so busy with work recently trying to meet a big deadline that I couldn’t sleep well all week because of the stress and couldn’t wake up early enough to squeeze in any running. By the end of the week my whole body even felt mildly achy from being so tired. If I hadn’t registered in advance for this race I probably would have just skipped it.

As I had already registered, I didn’t want to back out and in any event Santa Monica is probably my favorite place to run and so I thought I would just try to have fun. I made an effort to go to bed early Saturday night and ended up getting a decent amount of sleep even if not enough to entirely make up the deficit I had accumulated throughout the week. It was raining when I woke up in the morning. It very rarely rains in LA in May. I’m not used to running in the rain, and it seemed like things couldn’t get worse in terms of having a good run. However, the rain stopped by the time I got to Santa Monica, and conditions were actually quite ideal for running. I was wearing bright yellow split running shorts and no shirt which for some reason seemed to attract a few stares, but frankly I couldn’t be bothered to care (unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, I didn’t show up in any of the race photos). Anyway, I enjoyed the run and I did the best I could for the shape I was in. I think I paced myself well and ran my best during the last couple of miles of the race. Here’s how I did:

Overall: 293 out of 1404
Men: 230 out of 671
M 30-34: 45 out of 120
Finish: 50:48 (minutes:seconds)
Pace: 8:12 (minutes:seconds per mile)