Race Report: Del Valle 10K

the dry hills of northern california

This is going to be the most boring race report ever.

Two weeks ago I drove up to Sunnyvale for the Del Valle 10K.  I left crazypants with Mimi and Grandpa, and stayed with some old friends who were fantastic hosts/fellow racers/support crew.  We got up around 5 the following morning and made the drive out to Livermore.  The water was a really nice 71 degrees, the sun was out…pretty ideal.

My strategy was to go out really, really easy and hang on.  Because I was terrified of not finishing.

The course was 4 x 2,500m loop around a lake.

So I went out easy.  Like, suuuuuuper easy.  For the first 7.5K.  That is a very long time to swim easy.  Fortunately I had this song to keep me company:

The. whole. time.

My splits:

Lap 1: 39+ min
Lap 2: 42+ min
Lap 3: 41+min
Lap 4: 41+min

With about a 30 second break between loops 2 + 3, and 3 + 4 (I just swam by the aid station after the first lap, didn’t need a break).

Total time: 2:44:xx

Strategy made for a boring race, but it worked!  I broke 3 hours, didn’t faceplant running up the ramp (which I was nervous about), and came out honestly feeling fine.  I thought I could have gone further (though in retrospect, I felt like I picked it up at the end, when in reality it looks like I just held steady).

Aside from a foot/leg cramp towards the end of lap 3 that I thought was going to be the end of my race, but somehow miraculously disappeared, there was little to no excitement.  I spent a lot of lap 2 worrying about a turtle biting me.

time for beer

I finished not sore, surprisingly not too exhausted, and feeling like I need to do another 10K to see if I can actually race it.  …then proceeded to not swim for what is now going on 2 weeks and promptly got out of shape.

And that was it!  Ready to rock Tahoe.