On Saturday, I ran the Baltimore 10 Miler as the second leg of the King Crab Challenge (running the Frederick Half, B10 and the Baltimore Half all in the same year).



I have such a love/hate relationship with this race. Well actually, it's probably a lot of love with only a teeny bit of hate.

I love the location, the organization, the swag, the lake on the course.

I hate the hot and humid summer weather and all the hills.

This year, we actually got pretty lucky though with the weather. It was only in the high 60s at the start, and while it was definitely humid it wasn't nearly as bad as the last time I ran it.


Ran into my friend Jeff at the start! We used to work at the Diamondback, Maryland's newspaper, together

My plan going into the race, was to enjoy the first five miles, and then try not to die in the last five. I mean I wasn't well-trained, my softball injuries had prevented me from running for two solid weeks, so I had no clue what to expect.

I basically wanted to go out and enjoy it and have fun, anything beyond that was icing on the cake.

I should go into all races with such low expectations because I ended up kicking some major butt and finished about 40 seconds off my 10 mile PR (which was set on a super flat course in really ideal weather conditions).

I don't know where the fresh legs and high levels of mental grit came from, but I was glad they showed up.


Emily and me at the start.

I cruised through the first five miles, which I will say have a lot more downhill than uphill in them, averaging 8:57 per mile.

Things definitely slowed down in the second half of the course, when we were doing more climbing than cruising. My average pace in the last five miles fell to 9:38.

But still, I was expecting to be settling in around 10 minute miles for the whole race, so needless to say, I'm super happy with how this went.

I don't have any more long distance races on my calendar now until the Baltimore half in October. My plan for summer running is to keep most of my runs between three and five miles just to keep a somewhat steady base. Then I can ramp things up again when it gets closer to the half.