2011 State Farm 10 Mile and 5K. Commentary and Results

March 26, 2011 – The 13th edition of the State Farm 10M / 5K / 1M was today in Lincoln.  I have been to this race twice now in the last two years and both years have brought terrible weather.  Last year was wet and muddy (See the post here) and a bit cold.  This year it was even colder with threats of snow flurries and a stiff head wind on the way out.  It snowed most of the second half of the race!

This year, I used the race to get in a 20 mile long run in prep for the Lincoln Marathon on May 1st.  Since the race was only 10 miles, this required a bit of creativity.  My good friend and excellent running partner, Carrie Adams, met me at Cabela’s parking lot in La Vista at 6:00am, we carpooled to the race site in Lincoln, headed out on the trail at 7:00am and had 7 miles in before the race even started.  A shot of my results from RunKeeper below.

We had about 30 minutes of a break between the time we got back and the race starting.  A trip to the bathroom, picking up the race number, visiting with a few friends, changing shoes, a drink of water and a quick protein bar covered the time and we were back in line for the next race.  This time it was for real!

The run itself was fairly uneventful.  Looking at the RunKeeper charts above, you can see a few funny trends.  First, there are some times where we would speed up and then have to slow back down.  Carrie was itching to go faster than the [9:45] pace I was trying to set and a couple times we both had to say, this is too fast.  You can really see it in the bottom graph.

Secondly, you can see the pace got quicker in the last 2 miles of the race.  There was a marked change in pace at the 8th mile and the finish line as well.  Kind of fun to look at the run through the eyes of numbers.  They just don’t lie.

The race event was run very well and race results were available by 2:00pm on race day!  That is the fastest I have ever seen.  Good work guys!  They can be found here:  Super fast race results

We are now into the heart of the race season.  Next week is the 5th Annual Ni-Bthaska-K Trail Run – 12 K & 4 mile headed by the one and only Ivan Marsh.  I still need to get signed up!  What do you have coming up?