HUMAN RACE REPORT

To me, Sunday’s Human Race 8K represents the unofficial kickoff to the 2010 racing season. If you are super bored, you can probably scan the archives of this blog for race reports for the last 6 years (damn, have I been blogging that long). I’m sure they all contain in-depth analysis with splits, workouts and mileage leading up to the race, year-over-year comparisons, etc. This year I’ll just say I finished in 31:31, which was 12 seconds faster than last year. Best of all, I finished 2nd in the 40-44 age group…for people from Apple Valley. Actually, I was first is you count “just” runners. :-)

I wasn’t going to include a bunch of analysis with this race report, but I came across these numbers this morning. They’re my average monthly mileage for January – March, along with the time I ran at Human Race.

352 – 29:15 (2006)
305 – 29:20 (2001)
284 – 29:33 (2007)
230 – 29:52 (2000)
293 – 29:56 (2005)
225 – 30:02 (2008)
222 – 30:44 (2004)
138 – 31:31 (2010)
116 – 31:43 (2009)

Not quite every year, but for the most part the years with the most mileage lead to the fastest times. Obviously, the last two figures don’t include skiing mileage.

Just looking at this year’s time and comparing it to past years, it’s easy to get bummed out and frustrated. I started to go down that road, but then I realized it’s way too early in the season to do that. So I thought I’d try to give myself an honest assessment of the race. Overall, I’d say it was pretty average. I think I paced myself well, the first 2 miles passed in 6:20 and 6:15. The third mile marker arrived was about 45-60 seconds too early, so I stopped looking at splits after that. Maybe I’ve been doing this too long, but I never seem to be nervous on the start line any more. And more often than not, it’s easy to say “screw it” when someone passes me towards the end of the race.

Should I been fired up for every race? If so, maybe it’s time to retire from racing. Either retire or get fired up again - one or the other. If you want to read race reports of people that are fired up, check out Steve's new shiny 5K PR and Nichole's new shiny 8K PR.

For now it’s time to get fired up for Grandma’s. It’s very clear that the 45 mpw I’ve been running lately aren’t going to cut it. The Daniels’ Plan has started with the idea of doing workouts on Wednesdays and Saturdays. That might mess of some group runs and stuff, but I’ll try to make it work the best I can.

Today’s QOD is in honor of getting beaten by everyone I know yesterday;

"In case you haven't been keeping track of current events, we just got our asses kicked." -Soldier, from the movie Aliens