Tely10 Run and Family Visit

Yesterday, I ran the Tely10 for the first time. My goal this year was just to finish the race and I did it! The clock said one hour and 34 minutes when I crossed the finish line, I was somewhere around 1400 out of 2600 runners. The official times will be posted soon and I'll update this post with my times. (posted here) With so many runners, I started near the back of the pack. It was a wet day and the start line was slippery so it took a while before I got to the official starting point of the race after the gun went. But everyone wore a little chip on our shoes that activated when we crossed the start line and recorded our time when we crossed the finish line. So everyone actually has two race times, a Gun Time that records when we crossed the finish line from the time the gun shot went and the Chip Time that records the time it took us to run the distance from the start line to the finish line.

Tim's Gun Time: 1:34:55
Tim's Chip Time: 1:33:26

Overall, I'm very happy - the training schedule provided on the Tely10 website did a fantastic job of preparing me for the race. Advice from friends helped alleviate the last minute nerves and gave me lots of good strategy points for different sections of the course. I'm stiff today in my legs and between my shoulders, but I think a short run later today will shake that loose again. I like the Tely10 training schedule so much that I'm starting it over again to lead up to The Run for the Cure in October. That's a 5k fun run to raise money for Breast Cancer research and one that myself and a group of friends have participated in for many years.

On Friday, my Aunt Janet and her man Chuck arrived in St. John's. They've been doing a lot of travelling over the past couple of years in their fifth wheel. This summer they drove from Calgary to Philedelphia to visit Chuck's son and while they were in the neighborhood, they swung through Atlantic Canada and came to Newfoundland. Its been great having them around, we did Signal Hill and Cape Spear on Friday and made a trip down to Ferryland on Saturday. Sunday was downtown St. John's and out to Portugal Cove-St. Phillip's for fish and chips.

It turns out Chuck is an archery instructor, and one of the Parks reproductions I'm working on is a yew bow in two pieces. We're going down to The Rooms this morning to look at the bow, I think he'll be able to see things on it that I'd be oblivious too, so I'm really looking forward to that. Its also nice to have family see what I do. Sometimes I have a difficult job explaining what exactly I do to make a living.

Photo Credits:
Top: Lori White
Middle & Bottom: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top:Tely10 Raceday
Middle: Aunt Janet at the garden in Ferryland
Bottom: Chuck, Lori, and Janet at Cape Spear

2017 Gun Time: 1:44:30
2017 Chip Time: 1:41:38

Nerves Build as Tely10 Training Enters Final Week

This is the last week leading up to the Tely 10 Mile Road Race next Sunday. I'm confident about finishing, but I'm starting to get nerves. I've only ever done 5k fun runs in the past and I made the mistake of looking at last year's times and comparing them to my guestimated runtime. My guess right now is that I'll be somewhere in the 1:45-2:15 time range. Which will put me solidly in the back of the pack. There are over 2000 people registered right now, which is a lot of people and in order to finish in the top half you'd need to run the 10 miles in about 90 minutes or less. That might be a good goal for next year, but its out of my reach for this Sunday. I need to focus on finishing and not worry about the time - whatever time I get will be a personal best and the slower it is the easier it will be to beat next year.

The race starts at 8am, but I usually run in the evenings, so starting yesterday, I've switched my runs from evenings to the mornings. I need to adjust to running earlier in the day as well as getting up a couple hours earlier. Of the four scheduled runs each week, I've been doing two of them on the treadmill. I started to feel the impact of running on the road on my knee, and the shock absorbing treadmill track does a lot to help that. After a couple weeks of half road/half treadmill runs the pressure in my knee is gone.

I have family coming to town from Friday to Sunday, which is great, but I'm a little worried that I'm not going to be able to spend a lot of time with them because I need to go to bed and get up early on the weekend. I'm not sure if they'll understand why I want to go to bed at 9:30 on Saturday night so I can get up at 5:30 on Sunday morning so I can place 1750th in a race with 2000 people.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions: Scenes from a treadmill. No wonder people run outdoors.