Knowing I would be in Trinidad on vacation for almost three weeks, I looked for a race to run, hoping for a marathon (there was one in Barbados, but I didn’t want to leave Trinidad.) So I found the Trinidad RoadRunners club site advertising a 10k race in Mayaro which is on the far eastern side of the island, along the coast. Signed up right way, it was 40 dollars TT, which converted to USD is just under 7 dollars to run a 10k. No tshirt, but who cares?
I tried to train somewhat leading up to the race, and did run 60 miles over the two weeks leading up to the race here, but wouldn’t say I “trained” like some kind of goal race. I was happy to do those miles though just to be prepared for the heat and humidity. Come race day, the start was at 4pm, and we started about 5 minutes late.
I knew ahead of time I was going to suffer with the heat and humidity (86 degrees, and high humidity along the coast) but would do my best. I also had the misfortune of stubbing my second toe pretty badly about two hours before the race playing barefoot football (soccer) with some young kids from my girlfriends family. I would just have to deal with it, it’s not like I haven’t ran countless miles before with my toes throbbing from my messed up toenails...:)
Started out near the back of the pack which gave me the always happy result of only passing people throughout the race. I passed probably 30 people over the first 5k, and only one lady passed me back at around the 7k mark, and I just couldn’t recapture her. There was a water station every 2km and I took one at the first two, but after that, I resorted to taking two at the 6k, and 8k marks, and pouring one over my head, and drinking the other. Unlike the states they had no trash bins for the bottles of water they handed out, so people just tossed the bottles to the curb.
I really hurt to keep my pace up over the last 3-4 km, but I just had to refuse to back off, and before long the turn into town and the finish line were in sight. I know I used up all I had in that weather, but had hoped to be down around 50 minutes. In any case, I still PR’d by about 4 minutes over my older and weak 10k PR and came in at 53:28 for a pace of like 8:37 per mile.
After the race I found another 10k to sign up for in Port of Spain, Trinidad and even bargained the race fee down to 30 dollars TT from 40 since I was signing up “early.” So I get to do this one for 5 bucks USD equivalent. (6:1 exchange rate.) Let’s hope for another PR, even if just a small margin...this next race starts at 630 am, so it will be cooler, although that also means the humidity will be higher....
Also after the race, I approached the woman I couldn't catch and told her how well she did holding me off...we got to chatting, and her husband (who was there as well) is an ultrarunner with UTMB, Marathon De Sables, Badwater, and many other races under his belt. I bumped into that couple twice more again since the race (on the other island no less, over in Tobago) and we exchanged info, so I have a running friend if I go to Barcelona.
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