For once, I ran a smart 10K.

This morning I had the joy of running the Chesapeake Bay Bridge 10K with 20,000+ other participants. I had a really cool warm-up run on a trail along the water and into the woods on the Northrop Grumman campus adjacent to the bridge. The course was sun drenched with temperatures in the 50s. The views of the bay from the western shore and from the bridge deck were stunning. The after party, shared with running friends, and featuring good beer and, for me, fried oysters, was terrific.

But the best thing for me was how I executed my race plan.

As a runner who likes hills, I tailored my plan with the bridge's easy grade (186 feet up and down over 4.3 miles) in mind. The plan, as I laid out in my post "The cruelest distance," was to push hard but not too hard in the first uphill miles, turn it on more in the later downhill miles and work to maintain the pace in the final portion. I was targeting running a 9 minute per mile pace, which given my conditioning and the limitation of an injured piriformis, I thought might be a challenge but doable. I wanted to see 56:00 or less on the finish line clock.

I stuck to my plan and ran 54:35, good for 5th of 174 in my old guy age group!

My splits:

8:52 first mile (flat at the start, then up the bridge at a gentle grade, crowded so had to work around a lot of slower people).

9:15 second mile (all uphill on the bridge, nice views, I was less obstructed by slower runners).

8:37 third mile (now going down at same gentle grade, despite the faster time I felt that I took my foot off the gas just a bit).

8:29 fourth mile (down and then off the bridge on to Kent Island, pushed a little more).

8:36 fifth mile (mostly flat, still pushing).

8:52 sixth mile (flat with an overpass in the middle, working hard and tried to run even faster, but I was limited by my piriformis syndrome - sore butt).

1:53 last 0.2 (I could not speed up much but I knew I had more than met my goal as I ran to the finish banner).

Odds are great I will continue to make mistakes in race plans and in execution. But I will remember the 2016 Chesapeake Bay Bridge 10K as one race where I ran the plan and achieved what I envisioned. Now that's real fun!