The NorCal 10 Miler - PA/USATF 10 Mile Championship - 03/06/10

The NorCal 10 Miler was the Pacific Association/USA Track and Field 10 mile road championship.  As with most PA races, this event drew a very competitive crowd.  Linda Somers Smith set an age group record (women 45-49), bettering the old record by more than 2 minutes.   

The race was held on Saturday, at 10:00 AM.  Redding is about a three and one-half hour drive North of THE CITY.  With the late start, you can drive up that morning.  I went up Friday afternoon with my wife to make it a more leisurely experience.  That gave us the chance to pick up my race number the night before, sleep and have breakfast before heading over to the race.

Redding sits at the top of the Sacramento Valley, with mountains on three sides.  The Sacramento River starts at Mount Shasta and makes a 90 degree turn in Redding.  The Southern Pacific Railroad built through Redding (then Poverty Flats).  That is largely why it exists as a larger City and not a small hamlet.  The railroad also named the town, despite local efforts to pick a different name (Reading, after an early settler in the area, was preferred).  Above, I am standing on the 1914/15 Distelhorst Bridge over the Sacramento River with, I am guessing, Mount Shasta in the background.  The bridge was closed to autos in 1997, but is still used by pedestrians and bikes.  The race crosses this bridge in the last mile.

There are actually three races, a one mile run/walk (163 finishers), a three mile (201 finishers) and the signature 10 miler (309 finishers).  The one miler is primarily for kids who compete by grade and school.  The three mile race is mostly locals.  The 10 mile race is dominated by teams, both local and regional.  The races are presented by the SWEAT running club.  This was my first race with the Pamakids Racing Team.  Given the distance from THE CITY, there were only four of us who made the trip.

The 10 miler starts Westbound on a paved path on the South side of the river.  At about  two and one half miles, it crosses to the North side on a modern footbridge (picture below) and goes East.  The North side has some short, but steep hills.  After the hills, the race enters a residential area in what one person described as a keyhole configuration.  The course then doubles back over the outbound route, crosses to the South side, passes the starting line, goes back over the river on the Distelhorst Bridge and finishes on the North side of the river in a city park.  A very scenic and moderately challenging course.  I saw Marie A., another runner from THE CITY, before the race.  She clued me in on the course and hills, so they were not a shock to me.

The sun was out and it was warmer than I had expected.  I shed my jacket early and ended up shedding a t-shirt I had planned to wear under the team singlet.  Thank goodness my wife was there as Equipment Manager.  The race is actually pretty low-key and smaller than I had expected.  The start line was hard to find.  It turned out to be a piece of red tape on the bike path and nothing more.  While the field was small, so was the start area.  I started the race with some girl's pony tail on my shoulder. 

The starter appeared about five minutes before the race and we started.  Normally, many people go out fast and I spend the first half mile to mile picking my way through the crowd.  In this race I was immediately in a pack keeping pace with a dozen or so other runners.  There were no stragglers and there was very little picking my way through the crowd.  At the one mile mark I was under 6:00, which was way too fast for a 10 miler.  I backed off the pace.  As one person told me after the race, you have be careful of this in PA races because there more fast runners and fewer slow runners.  This makes judging your speed by those around you difficult.

After crossing to the North side, I encountered the hills, but still kept a good pace and even passed a few people.  When we got into the residential area, the sun, a stiff breeze and the hills got the better of me.  I started to lose pace around mile 5 and could not hold it through the hills on the return.  I managed to keep all my miles under 7:00, enjoyed the views and finished out the race.  My time was 1:06:16.  My slowest 10 miler in several years.  Still, I was able to score points as both a master (40 and over) and a senior (50 and over).  I was also very happy that I had no hamstring problems and needed only minimal recovery. 

After the race, I cheered in the rest of the team, we compared notes on the race and went to lunch.  The other three runners were a women's masters team.  They were able to score team points.  Unlike the television show "Who's Line Is It Anyway?," the point do matter.  They count toward a year long PA/USATF race series.  The drive home was very pleasant until we came to the East Bay, where it was congested. 

Next up is The Across the Bay 12K on March 21.  The race goes from Sausalito to THE CITY, over the Golden Gate Bridge.  It is also part of the PA/USATF series.  I have run this race twice before, the last time in 2008.