Chip Cowsert guest blog - Army 10 Miler

My brother-in-law ran in the Army 10 Miler this morning. He's a lot quicker than I am to his race write-ups, and was kind enough to send this out and let me know that I could use it as a guest post for my blog. So I'm dusting off the ol' keyboard long enough to Copy/Paste his email in for you.

I promise I have lots of things to say about running recently, and that I am even doing some running, but I've had more pressing matters to deal with. Oh, and I realize while typing this that I never told my blog readers that we had our baby! Sorry for not letting you know earlier, mom.

Enjoy Chip's race recap!

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Thanks for the well wishes for my race today everybody! For those who'd be interested, I thought I'd write a little race recap. For those who are less interested, you can scroll to the bottom to find my splits/time.

Emily Holloway (Katie's cousin-in law) drove us into the pentagon parking lot at 7:20. Our group today was made up of Anne Muntz (Katie's Aunt) and Ryan Holloway (Katie's cousin). Due to a bum hip, Katie decided not to race today but made the day so much more enjoyable by carrying our dry clothes and food! We hit some traffic so I was running a little late on my warm-up. It didn't matter though, because I stood in security for 35 minutes before making my way onto the course. I finally made my way onto the course at 8:01...a minute after the starting time for my group. The next few waves were being held in the starting area. I put my jersey on and began running to start line.

I started the race about 3 minutes behind the first wave of runners. About 34,000 runners were being held back from the starting line...but I was allowed to start with about 5 other "yellow wave" runners who were each arriving at the start line after being frisked...it was pretty surreal to take the line with 4 other guys as a few thousand people stood and watched.

I talked to the other guys running with me and we shared our goal paces...one guy was trying to run 730's and one guy 700's. Since I wasn't warmed up yet, I decided to not run with the 700's guy but ran with the 730 guy for a mile until we hit the back of the first wave. Our pace slowed down for the next mile since we were caught up in the back of the first wave.

I finally got down to pace for the 3rd mile and was able to stay pretty comfortable through the middle miles. I was less consistent in the middle of the race than I'd like to be. I was hoping to find somebody to run with...but missing the start of the race made that difficult.

Around mile 5 I got passed by a guy with a fort hood jersey. He and I ran together for the next four miles and then raced over the last mile and he beat me.

As bad as missing the start could have been. I think it made me run my first two miles conservatively and ultimately helped me finish pretty close to my goal of 67:30.

Here are the mile splits I recorded.
7:20 (ran with a guy who was aiming for 7:30...we were both just trying to warm up!)
7:27 (hit the back of the 1st wave, had to weave around folks for the rest of the race)
6:44 (was really excited to get down to pace but wasn't ready to hold it yet)
6:57
6:50
6:50 (Got connected with another guy (fort hood jersey) who was working his way through the crowds after starting late...ran together for the rest of the race, and congratulated each other as we finished...I'm really glad he showed up!)
6:35
6:32
6:26
5:56 (woohoo! I was hoping to run a good 5k this winter, I'm really excited to be able to put up a decent mile time on tired legs!)

Time 67:42

Special thanks to Katie for cheering/carrying stuff/and even driving after!

Chipper!