Monday, April 30, 2012

GET IN GEAR RACE REPORT

Against my better judgment, I did sign up for Get in Gear, even though I basically felt terrible all of last week. In addition to feeling terrible, the weather looked terrible too with the forecast calling for 40-45 degrees and rain. Throw a $38 entry fee on top of that and I had all intentions of not racing. But like I said in my last post, I was curious to see where I stood compared to my Human Race performance. In the years I’ve run both events, I typically try to shoot for holding my 8K pace from Human Race for the 10K of Get in Gear. That means I needed to run around 41:30 or roughly 6:40 pace. Remember, since Human Race I pretty much replaced all speed workouts with hill workouts and lots of trail running.


At the line, I tried to move behind all the people I recognized. I thought I was in a pretty good position, although the gal right in front of me was wearing yoga pants, headphone and a hooded sweatshirt. Anyway, I didn’t think I was too far back. Then when the gun went off I was amazed at the number of people that were in front of me. No worries, I just went with the flow. After about 2 minutes I finally started to recognize some friends just up ahead of me, so I figured I was in a good spot. Mile 1 came and went in 6:32 and I was pleased with that. I felt comfortable so I stayed where I was at and hit mile 2 in 6:34. Mile 3 goes over the Mississippi River, so there’s a little climb. I knew it’d be slow, so I didn’t even look at my watch. Later I learned I ran 6:45 for that mile.

I passed halfway in 20:35. Of course, that’s 41:10 pace, so I’m ahead of my goal. With the St. Thomas hill coming up and what I thought would be a second half headwind, I figured I was still on pace for 41:30. Once I recovered from the St. Thomas hill I started to race more, instead of just going through the motions. I started working with the people around me and trying to catch the people ahead of us. This lead to a 6:39 mile 4th mile, followed by a 6:33 5th mile. Some quick math revealed that my 8K time was about 35 seconds faster than my Human Race time.

I was still feeling good and trying to reel in some familiar faces ahead during the last mile which was my fastest of the day in 6:27. I closed in 1:19 for a final time of 40:52. That means I ran 8 seconds faster than Human Race for 2K more. Of course, I have to keep in mind that it was 75 and windy at Human Race, so it’s a little difficult to compare.

I was thinking back and it’s probably been 20 years since I ran slower than 40 minutes for 10K. However, given where I was a month ago, and how I felt last week, I’ll take it.

Today I closed the books on April with 225 miles. Not great, not terrible. The problem I’ve had the last 2 months is that I can’t close out the month. After 3 solid weeks of training, I plan on a cutback week. However, instead of cutting back to 45 – 50 miles, I’ve been cutting back to 30 - 35 miles. Maybe that’s what my body is craving at that point of the training cycle.

Up next in May: New Prague Half Marathon and the Brian Kraft 5K.

3 comments:

Willie said...

Nice racing Chad. I laughed about our commentary of how you felt, weather but the desire to know where you are since Human Race was my big contributing factor of getting out of bed. Must know how I finish. Steady run, promising progression so cheers to New Prague. see you there.

Jenny said...

Thanks for sharing your experiences here on your blog.

Jenny said...

Thanks for sharing your experiences here on your blog.