Broad Street 10 Miler 2009 - Race Report

Official Results:
1:01:52 (6:11/mile)
226th out of 23,093
37th out of 1927 in M30-34

It's been a spotty training month to say the least, so I had no idea what was in the tank for Sunday at Broad St. I had made some noise back in January about going under an hour in this race, but that was before I got my neck lump and blew the month of April training-wise worrying about it (or rather, having psychosomatic symptoms of thyroid cancer). So, taking into account the lack of training, I backed my goal off to something in the 60-62 minute range.

This race is a bit of a logistics issue, being point to point, but more so due to the fact that nearly 27,000 people entered the race. Packet pickup was a mad house. I highly recommend coughing up the extra dough to get your packet mailed to you...unless you enjoy long lines to buy overpriced goo, endless demonstrations of how to use "the stick," and other fun race expo types of things. I was even so impatient that while waiting for my T shirt, I saw that it was cotton and bailed. Adding to the logistical issues was also was riding the train race morning from the sports complex to the start line, and standing in the rain for two hours with a 15 month old. Not so cool either. But the minute the gun fired the race got 100% better for me.

Most of team Trevena before the race

I started in the first corral behind the elite runners, but I stayed towards the middle with Becca and another friend of mine, the now infamous Alastair (whose dual with Becca rivals Salazar and Beardsly, well not really, but if Becca had a good hip it might have been a close race). This was a tactical error as I ended up playing frogger for 3 miles to get some open running room. No big deal though, it probably helped to slow me down so I could save some for the end.

No real tale to tell about this race. I tried to run 6 flat, and did so pretty well. I hit the 5 mile mark at 30:13. I knew going 59 and change was out of the question since the first half of this race is downhill and the second half is flat...no way I could go 29:45 on flat terrain over the second 5. The weather was great, 55 and raining. Everything was rolling along great until about 7.5 when I got hit with bad abdominal cramps. These slowed me to a couple 6:45s, then by 9 the cramps were gone and I was back at it again and finished with a 6:11.


There were a couple moments during this race when I was celebrating the fact that I could be out there enjoying myself...well, as much enjoyment as you can have in oxygen debt - especially as we passed by Center City, and I saw some of the roads we drove on our way to Jefferson for my biopsy two weeks ago. I kept thinking about how lucky I was the past week. It was only Monday I found out the biopsy was negative for cancer, and Sunday I raced.

Elena looking for Mom and Dad to finish.

In the team division, we got 4th out of 40-something in the corporate co-ed division behind 6-Abc, Vanguard, and our rival biotech and defending champions Centacor. Not bad for a 20 person company. We decided to make sure our next couple hires are Kenyan.

After the race it pretty much sucked as the sky opened up and dumped harder rain on us. We got really cold and headed for home. Elena had a blast and the highlight of her day was eating two "TastyCakes", a Philadelphia delicacy. She was a rock star, no nap from 4:30am until we were walking towards the car around 11:30.

In the end, I am really pleased with my performance. I ran a PR over 10 miles, even on spotty training. And my top 300 finish might earn me a spot in the elite corral for next year, if I chose to do this race again, which is probably unlikely unless Trevena throws another team in. Now...what to do about IM CDA??? A blog is forthcoming...