10K — Perhaps Best Forgotten

So I ran the 10K race on Saturday the 29th and found out...I'm not in very good shape.
43:18 and the course was probably 150m short, although the last 4k was uphill (gradual, but still....)
Just did not feel capable of moving very fast at all.

Week of 4/17 ~23

67km, 6:12 running time
The week was marked by a decent 8k tempo run with the kids on Monday, an interval workout where I did not feel good (as in, able to run fast) on Wednesday, and a 2 hour run on Friday.

Week of 4/24 ~ 30

Did two easy days, then cruised the 5,000m time trial in 23:00 on wednesday. Took off thursday and friday, travelling up to the hot spring resort area of Nasu Shiobara on Friday. It's in the mountains, one hour north of Tokyo by shinkansen bullet train. Very nice area. Went up with the wife, and Padraig from the club was also there with his family, so it was a nice weekend.
Except for the race. The weather was good, so no excuses there. I had been running for 10 weeks since recovering from the cracked kneecap, but only 5 of those were decent training weeks. So I wasn't expecting too much, in fact, said that I would be happy with 44 minutes. But once the race comes around, you go into it with the same feeling as other races, namely, that you will go out at a good pace and hold it or pick it up. This was not to be, as I went out at about 4:15/k, did all right on the downhill section, but then got slower and slower. All kinds of old, feeble-looking dudes were passing me. At least that's how it seemed, although I suppose they were running fairly well.
Was only 14th in the 60s (out of 182), which is the lowest I ever finished a race.

Ok, so I'm not in great shape! I get it. I'll work on that over the next few months.