Pear Run 10K

After sitting out running events the entire month of April, I figured Pear Run be a good one at which to step back in. So when my alarm clock went off at 5 a.m., I got dressed, ate a large Kit Kat bar and drove over to Pearland for a 10K this morning:

Km 1: (Ignored. Waiting for mile marker to hit lap button.)
Km 2: 12:29 for both kilometers (Where are the mile markers? Is the race now managed by Canadians?)
Km 3: 6:09
Km 4: 6:00
Km 5: 6:01
Km 6: 6:45
Km 7: 6:38
Km 8: 7:15
Km 9: 5:50
Km 10: 6:16

My Garmin recorded my 10K elapsed time as 1:03:26, several minutes off my PR pace from March, and even slower than last year's Pear Run. But I'll take it.

Right on schedule, near the 8-km mark (5 miles in American-speak) I could feel the twinges starting in the left achilles tendon that had been bugging me all spring, so I stopped to walk and give my calf muscles a good stretching before going on. It was here that a tall, young-looking guy struck up a conversation with me, telling me that this was only his second marathon, and it was much farther than the one he did in March. Yup, I agreed that this would be a farther "marathon" for him than that Stride4Stroke 5K around Rice University. I just smiled and nodded before picking up my stride again.

I identified one "bandit" on the course, because I recognized her race bib as being of last year's design. Can we blame that behavior on recession-induced desperation?

This is the fourth year in a row I have been at this well-run event, and it's the fourth year in a row that no pears were to be found at the after-race. Perhaps they should at least consider giving them out as awards? Speaking of which, no official results are available yet because the timing people's laptop got fried by a power surge. We'll see if they can recover the data, because they won't know how to distribute the age-group awards otherwise.