Ran the Nike 10k Human Race last night. It was something like 13,000 people in Austin, competing against cities across the world. You got to pick a charity to run for. I was running for the UN Refugee Services. I had planned on running, but then I didn’t really get my act together and they were no longer taking registrations online so I sort of gave up. Then on Friday my sister emailed me and asked if I was running, and if I could perhaps pick up her registration packet. That was just enough of a kick in the pants to get my and my mother signed up to.

Which is how my mom, sister, brother-in-law, and I ended up on a bus heading downtown yesterday. We lined up in Congress avenue. For some reason I decided I was kind of slow and started in the 11 minute mile crowd (you start based on how fast you can run a mile). We ran across the starting line, headed down Congress, and then turned on second. That was the first time it hit you. Nike supplied red racing shirts and the entirety of second street was full of red. And that didn’t let up. Turning from the Bob Bullock History Museum onto MLK there was red stretching all the way up to Red River. Turning from Red River onto Dean Keaton there was red all the way to Guadalupe. It was amazing.

That said, a lot of the people were obviously not runners. A large number of people around me started walking before they even hit one mile. I really think one might want to be able to run further than a mile before signing up for a 10k. There are shorter races you can run first. It was much more of a mental game than the 5ks I’ve run. I was constantly having to dodge walkers and think about what I was doing.

That said, I think being slow at the beginning really paid of in the end. I was really able to power through the last two miles when everyone around me was fading. The fact I run in the heat and up and down hills a lot paid off too. People were really complaining about the heat and the hills. I found the hills pretty easy, and the heat was nice. The coolest race I’ve run was 89 degrees, so last night was pretty cool.

Getting the bus back after the race was a bit of an adventure. A CapMetro supervisor got us back on our bus, but it picked us up at exactly the same stop where we got dropped off. Which should never happen.

So what was my time? My dream was to make it in under an hour, and I think I did pretty well:

Time: 1:01’40”

Austin Ranking: 2959

World Ranking: 102751