10K Race Report

At the ungodly hour of 5:30 this morning...our alarm went off and all the triathletes at the Chula Vista OTC rolled out of bed...grabbed a bag of race gear and headed out to the vans. We drove a bit north (not sure where exactly, but it wasn't more than 40 minutes of a drive) and arrived at our destination to compete in the Domino's St. Patrick's 10 run. I was feeling great in warm up...my heart rate was low and I was runing fast. We all headed down to the start area and huddled in a group...near the front which I wasn't too happy about because I was sure that people were just going to trample me:)
When we started...I was relaxed, I let all my fellow OTC'ers head off at crazy fast paces...and focused on my goal of negative spliting the 10K by hitting the 5K at 20min and then descending the whole way back to the finish. I was on track...my mile times were interesting because I don't think they were in the exact right places...but I was at 6:00 for the first mile, 6:45 for the second (I did slow down a bit), and then 6:27 for the third. They did not have a half way mark so I guessed my 5K to be at 20min, Perfect!
Unfortunatly, I happened to look in front of myself at that moment and saw my teammate and roommate, Jasmine, cloapsing on the ground. I looked like her mind was saying 'go' and her body was saying 'no'. It was really scary but I got to her quickly and got her in a coherent state and then we walked the rest of the 10K together to the finish. We might have got DFL but we did the whole thing and spent a bit of time bonding and chatting:) She is a really strong girl and I know that this made us both stronger!
Tomorrow we are heading out to the mountains on our bikes for a 4 hour ride, smooth pace, but it will be a tough one!