Space City 10 Miler Race Report

This race is part of the HARRA race series, which means there are quite a few serious runners and track clubs at the race.  I’m not sure if I’ve been out of the Houston race scene for so long or if it was this particular race, but I didn’t recognize anyone at this race. 

My original goal was to treat this as a fast long run and practice running while bringing in a fair amount of calories.  I never really intended to run it as a race.  The plan was to drink Gatorade at the water stations, eat a cliff bar at mile 4 and the sport jelly beans at mile 8.  For the most part I followed my plan, minus the “not racing it” part.  I’m glad I ran it hard.  

This race was a test of your mental toughness.  The course was almost a boring as running on a treadmill.  If said treadmill was in a white room with no TV or radio.  There was almost zero fan support, just one little girl sticking her hand out for a high five.  The course was mainly roads down vacant lots or multi-lane highways.  The water stations were great and the volunteers did a great job of letting you know where the water/Gatorade was and which you were grabbing.  

Overall it was good race for me, it was much hotter than I expected, but I still performed about as good as I could have hoped.  My splits were even, only 20 seconds difference between fastest and slowest mile.  About mile 8.5 I had a lack of concentration for about 5 minutes, which led to two miles being at near an 8 minute pace.  My last mile was my fastest, but just barely.  Final time 1:18:14, finishing 17^th in my age group (out of 51) and 133 place overall (out of 734).  Next up:  Houston Half Marathon.

Going Vegan (sort of)

Anyone who knows me at all knows I have no philosophical argument against eating meat.  Beef fajitas from Lupe’s Tortilla is pure heaven in your mouth.  My favorite go to meal to cook for guest is cheese ravioli with chicken in a cream sauce sprinkled with bacon bits.  However, one thing I’ve noticed is the more I run the less I desire to eat meat.  I crave veggies.  When I go to the grocery store, as I walk through the produce section, random veggies seem like must have items.  Couple this with reading Scott Jurek’s book Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness and I decided for the month of October to give being a vegan a try.  

I’ll confess up front I was going to try in August, even buying a few vegan cookbooks.  I then realized I had a ton of meat in my freezer.  So the plan was to stop buying animal products and use up what I had.  September was the month-o-vacations.  Between going back a week to Charlottesville, Va for my friend’s wedding and going to Colorado for 10 days, I knew I would be going out to eat most days.  That was not going to be a recipe for success.  

I also know I won’t be able to go 100% vegan this month.  I still have several non-vegan items that I’ll use up but most of them are things like chicken broth, milk chocolate, and evidently Worcestershire sauce has anchovies in it and is non-vegan.  The only real meat I have is 8 chicken wings in the freezer, and a half a quart of whole milk leftover from some recipe.

So this month I stocked up on various bean, lentils, and grains.  Bought tofu, tempeh, hemp and soy milk, nutritional yeast, and all other kinds of items for the first time ever.  We will see how it goes and how long I last.  I’m pretty good at the grocery store as I already eat very little processed food, but going out to dinner is going to be rough.  That is when I usually get all the great grilled meat items I don’t cook in my condo.  We’ll see how it goes and in a month I’ll update with how it has affected my running and such.