GET IN GEAR RACE REPORT

30 seconds. 5 measly seconds per mile.

It’s the difference between being happy and being satisfied.

It’s the difference between a good race and re-thinking my entire training plan. The idea was to cut my mileage in order to make my hard days hard. You’d think if I could hold 5:57 pace for 8K 6 weeks ago, that I’d be able to hold 6:00 pace for 10K after cutting my mileage and adding in some harder workouts.

Even with the lower mileage, maybe fatigue played a part, given that I ran 22 on Saturday, ran a VO2 max workout on Tuesday and then ran 14 miles on Thursday. My legs felt okay, but they lacked that zip you hope for on race day.

I think I made 2 mistakes in this race. First, I didn’t take full advantage of the first 2 miles, which are mostly a gradual downhill. I wanted to save something for the hill that occurs just after the halfway point. That’s a sound strategy, however, once up the hill I never really engaged in the race and picked things up. That was mistake number two. Up till that point I hadn’t looked at my watch at all. When I passed mile 4 I heard 24:10 (6:02 pace). Instead of picking up the pace and going after 6:00 pace, I just sort of settled in and was content to run 6:10s and maintain my position.

Before the race I thought about trying a new tactic for goal setting. Instead of setting a specific time goal, like 37:17 or 6:00 pace, I’d pick a time I was pretty sure I could hit, like 38:00, and try to run as far under that as possible. My reasoning was that if I wasn’t on 6:00 pace during the race, I wouldn’t give up. I would continue to push to get as far below 38:00 as possible. The verdict is still out on this approach. It needs some reevaluation.

I ended up splitting 18:40/19:07 = 37:47 (6:05 pace), which put me 111th overall out of 4,025 runners and 13th in my age group. Here are the results.

This is one of those races where you’d like to hang out afterwards and talk with as many people as possible. Unfortunately, I had to leave right away in order to get to a dance recital. I was fortunate enough to meet Bill and Adam (I believe), both who’ve been following along with my blog. That’s always cool. Of course, unless they turn out to be psychotic.

Finally, how’s this for weird? At the Human Race 8K in March I was the 100th male. Saturday I was again the 100th male. If I do that at Grandma’s, based on the last 3 years, I’d finish between 2:53 and 2:58.

Quote of the day;

“Always be happy, but never satisfied.” – Lisa Stone, University of Wisconsin’s women’s basketball coach (when she was at UW-Eau Claire)