So I failed again to turn in the time I wanted, instead ending up right around where I was at the last race - 20:45. I ran a very consistent pace, I hit the turn around at 10:22 and didn't feel like I was faster or slower in any particular part of the run. I'd been talking about 20 minutes for 2 weeks. So what happened?
It turns out I'm much better at coaching others than coaching myself.
1. After the 1st race I said "more interval work". I actually did a fair amount of tempo work.
2. I looked at my running log and saw what I wanted to see. For those of you who've been with me for a while now, you might remember Part 5 of a series I wrote about my personal training philosophy, in which I stated that I run 1/4 mile intervals at around 20-30 seconds per mile faster than my race pace. I raced at a 6:42 pace, my intervals have been in the 6:15-6:20 range. My training PREDICTED a time that was well over 20 minutes, and I shrugged it off in favor of optimism.
3. Start small, build slowly. I'm in 20-21 minute shape right now. Breaking 20 by a noticeable margin would be a big improvement - not small or slow at all. A can-do attitude is good, until it leaves you feeling disappointed when you fail to reach an unreasonable goal.
Truth be told, I had a great race on Saturday. My warm up was spot on. My race plan was a good one, and I followed it to a T (where does that expression come from anyway?). I won my age group, I got 6th overall. I ran exactly the race that I am in shape for, exactly the race that I was trained to run. Now, I need to train to run a faster race.
My training needs some fine-tuning. This should work well at the mileage I'm at, it won't bother me to sacrifice a little distance for some speed. I need to get my 1/4 mile intervals under 1:30 (a 6 minute pace, indicating a race of just under 20 minutes). This means throwing in some shorter intervals, 1/8 mile repeats (200m for those track alums out there) at an even faster pace. I've got 3 full weeks before I race again, meaning 5 opportunities for hard workouts to try and improve. To be realistic, I guess I should shoot for something in the 20:20 range for this one, and leave the sub-20 for later in the summer.
And I've got new shoes! I'll be breaking them in tomorrow morning on an easy run (Tuesday), with a full report on that later this week...
Breaking News!
So I'm not getting around to posting this until today (Tuesday) because I didn't get my race pictures downloaded, so here's the shoe report - I hate the first run in new shoes. I wore them around walking for a bit to start the process the other day, then went for an easy 4 mile run this morning in them. It was hard to get the laces right, they hurt the outside of my soles for the first bit of the run, and just altogether felt new. This is ok though, since the pain was in areas that I've felt it before in new shoes, meaning that another 5-10 miles on them and they'll be just right.
What kind of shoes did you get? I always hate the first run in new shoes as well.
ReplyDeleteI really like the Nike Dart series of shoes. I've got one pair that is pushing 500 miles that still feel great, but my ASICS are starting to wear out. I keep a rotation of 2 or 3 pairs all of the time, to allow them to dry out completely between runs so they last longer.
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