Oakley Mini 10k: A PR Amid a Sea of Ponytails

I honestly don't have much to say about the Oakley Mini 10k other than, well, I PRed . . . which would sound impressive except I've only ever raced that distance three other times. None of those races were particularly recent (I refuse to count the ice-skating that I did at the Boston Buildup), so if I hadn't PRed it would have been rather embarrassing.

Needless to say, I've never run an all-female race before, so that was a bit different. Standing in a corral with 5,000 other women on a humid morning smells better than being mixed in with the men, and it's a bit different not to have to seek out the next ponytail ahead of me on the course that I need to catch . . . because they're all ponytails!

The most significant thing about this race, I guess, happened when I looked at the results. Since running with Gotham City, I've met more and more runners of varying levels, from beginner right up to elite. Therefore, I recognize more and more names in the results tables. Imagine my astonishment, I recognized the name of my coach's wife . . . just two slots ahead of me!

Frankly, that fact still seems nearly impossible. This is a woman who raced competitively in college and, when first I met her for a group run, sprinted off so fast that I wasn't sure we had been meant to run together at all. Oh let me add: she was pregnant when she did that. So yeah. I never thought I'd ever be coming remotely close to her times. And maybe she had a bad day, and maybe I had a good day, but regardless of how or why it happened, I have to say that makes me even more excited than my PR. Because who better to judge my progress against than the runners I idolize!

Oakley New York Mini 10k
(Don't ask me why it's called "mini" . . . but rest assured, it was a full 10k.)

Race Length	Finishing Time	Average Pace	Overall Place	Gender Place	Age Group Place (F25-29)
10k	39:12	6:19/mile	46 / 5,870	Same as overall!	22 / 1,209