Sunday’s 22 was surprising in that my legs felt great afterwards and I had no soreness at all.  I expected DOMS yesterday but…nothing.  So I was feeling ready for today’s 8w/5x600s at 5K race pace.  What I didn’t take into account was that the 22-miler topped a peak week of 57 miles, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when once I got outside, all I wanted to do was travel at a snail’s pace.

My goal was to hit the same as last week, 7:15 avg, since that’s McMillans corresponding 5K pace for a 3:40 marathon. I begin the intervals and my first one is 7:26…hrmph!  That sucks.  OK, time to start paying attention!  Got it together and did the deed.  Intervals splits were 7:26, 7:14, 7:09, 7:12, 7:08…avg. 7:14. So it ended up ok, though I’d have preferred even pacing.

Funny though, afterwards I felt really energized and instead of my usual apres-interval-poopedness where it’s all I can do not to walk home, I continued on to run 4.5 more miles at 9:01 avg. pace, leaving me with a total of 10.5 for the morning.  This is good because I’m having to rearrange my schedule to accommodate Monday’s race and toploading the week will allow me to get a mini-taper in there.

Meanwhile, I’m having little shivers of anticipation for the race.  It’s an automatic PR because it’s my first 4-mile race, but I want to do well.  On the other hand, with marathon training it can go either way – you have tired legs so short races might not be up to par, then again, you’ve been improving fitness, so it could be a good time.  I don’t race a whole lot, so it’s hard not to want to set an aggressive goal.

I think the way I’ve figured is to take my 7:52avg. from last week’s 7 mile tempo, convert it to 12K, then input that as a race into my Daniels’ spreadsheet, which predicts a 30:19 (7:35 pace) for a 4-mile race.  Since I’m basing it off a tempo, it shouldn’t leave me redlining.  Then again, I don’t know the course at all, it’s in a different town – though I must say, Google Street View was very helpful in this regard.  I was able to “travel” a good chunk of the course that way, so it’s not a complete mystery.

My main thing is, I need to stop making races (especially little ones like this) so “oooh, big deal” in my head.  I think the way to do that is to do more of them so when they suck, it just gets absorbed into the mishmash of race outcomes.  Here’s to a future of mucho racing and carefree attitudes!  Yeah, right, haven’t I said this before?

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