Hello everyone, Brian McCarrie here with my Garden of the Gods 10 miler Race Report.

First of all, I was really nervous going into this run. It's been a while since I've run 10 miles and I honestly didn't know how it was going to turn out but in the end I didn't do horrible so that's good.

Here's how the day went.

Fortunately I didn't have any pre-race anxiety and was able to get a good nights sleep and I woke up at 6:00am feeling rested. I live right down the street from the Garden of the Gods so I got out of bed, got changed, ate a banana, drank some water and I was out the door. I walked down my street to the Garden, warmed up on the trails a bit and met up with the other Mighty Marmots who were all ready to run.

The gun went off right at 7:00am and we were on our way. I took it slow for the first couple of miles, actually I took it slow the whole race but I specifically didn't want to burn myself up right out of the gate.

After the initial jockeying for position that everyone goes through I found a groove and settled in.

The hills were HARD but I felt strong. My breathing and cardio felt right. I probably could have pushed it a bit more. My endurance on the other hand, not so good. My legs really started to feel heavy in the later miles. One good thing is that because I live so close to the Garden, I'm in there all of the time and I know the place like the back of my hand so there were no surprises on the course. I knew all of the hills that were ahead of me. So not having to play that mental game was nice.

The numbers for the day shake out like this:

Finishing time: 1:39
38th out of 61 in my age group (45 to 49)
I placed 467th overall out of 943
Average pace: 9:55 per mile

Interesting side note: The first time that I ran the Garden of the Gods 10 mile was back in 1996, 22 years ago. The time I ran that day was 1:39. Exactly the same as I ran today. So I haven't lost anything but I haven't improved either. :)

Opportunities for improvement are in two areas. 1. Endurance. I need to ramp up my mileage so I can feel more comfortable running the longer distances. 2. Speed. I could use some speed work.

If I work on these two areas I'm sure that my age group results will improve.

Next up is the Summer Round Up Run Half Marathon on July 8th. I've got slightly less than a month to prepare so my focus will be to stay consistent and to slowly ramp up those long runs.

Some pictures from the run and video race report is below.

Go Marmots!!!