May 30th, 2010
I’m disappointed. I mean, I knew my time would suffer, it was 77 degrees out and heat does me in, but I had no idea I’d be quite that far off the mark. On the other hand, where is the mark? I really don’t know anymore, I think it’s riding around on a unicorn’s back.
Last night I looked at last year’s time for this race (it was the first time I broke 21) and the training surrounding it and saw that my training runs were all faster than this year, though my quality runs this past couple weeks are almost lining up again. Granted, I’d spent the first half of 2009 training for a goal Half and did quite a bit of racing, whereas today was my first 5K in almost a year. This probably didn’t help.
The Race
There’d been a thread on the forums recently about warming up and in it, I realized I’d been doing myself a disservice with my usual 1-mile warmup. I always do at least 2 miles before any quality work, so isn’t it dumb to do less when you’re expected to go faster and it counts? So I did a 2.25 warmup, stayed in the shade as much as I could and ran very easy because I didn’t want to get heated up. Did a few strides which didn’t bode well speedwise, but then, my pre-race strides never do.
I lined up a few rows behind the fast guys. We had chipped bibs this year which helped lower the start-line placement anxiety. Some woman about my age stood next to me and said with a conspiratorial smile, “I’m slow and probably shouldn’t be lined up right here”. I asked her what she was going for, which she didn’t understand, so I rephrased it, “What finish time are you expecting?” She said, “Oh, somewhere around 30 minutes.” I said, “Yeah, you shouldn’t be here, you better move back”. I smiled when I said it and she was cool about it, but huge internal eye-rolls.
The race was uneventful, after we settled into the first 1/2 mile, nobody passed me from that point on, save one surprise man at the final kick. I knew after the first mile I wasn’t going to get a good time, I was just too hot and my breath too loud. Still, I passed people throughout the race and if nothing else, my splits were consistent.
Final time, 21:39 (might have a couple seconds less, I think that’s clock time). The splits went 7:01, 6:59, 6:54 and 6:48 pace for the last tenth.
On the good side, I won 1st 40-49 AG (3rd OA was a 40-year old, so I’m sure Athlinks will annoyingly report me as 2nd AG) and was 8th female. But as I mentioned on Facebook, the win feels empty since my time was so poor. Sure, the weather had something to do with it, but I clearly have a lot of work to do beyond Nature’s contribution.
While my sensible mind tells me this is just a comma in the larger racing scheme, I still fear that 2009 was my Flowers For Algernon period and that now I’m regressing until I end up retarded again, just like Algernon. Yeah yeah, that’s gotta be bogus, I am improving again, but it’s so damn frustrating.
Next Race
There’s another 5K in a couple weeks that I also did last year. It was my PR race. I had a lot of thoughts today about whether to do it or not. My initial thought was, I’ll wait till the very last minute to sign up and only do it if the weather’s good. But that’s stupid. No matter how demoralizing a poor race is, it’s one step better to racing well and my best racing happened when I was doing it often and worried less about it.
Right now, as has happened before when not racing much, they become so precious that there’s too much weight attached to each one. Time to race more, in whatever crappy conditions are served, and get used to having sub-optimal finish times (which hopefully, will become optimal the more I do it).
It’s no secret that racing often makes you a better racer and beyond that, it’s the best speedwork possible, so I need to get over my embarrassment at shit race times (damn you, Athlinks!!! And this blog!!! And Facebook!!! And my forum participation!!! And… oh, nevermind) and just go for it. So I’ll be doing that 5K on the 13th no matter how stinkin’ hot it is.
New Shoes!
To drive the final nail in my overstriding/heelstriking coffin, I bought some Saucony Kinvaras yesterday, a lightweight neutral shoe that encourages forefoot/midfoot striking due to it’s scant 4mm heel drop. I’m excited as hell to put these to the test and will give you my thoughts on them in the next week.
Have a great memorial day, folks!
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We train to race. We measure our success by our times. I’m to the point where if I think I’ve done my best, I’m satisfied. That doesn’t mean I’m happy though.
We train to race better the next time. We pre-analyze, we analyze, we post-analyze. We remind ourselves that we haven’t done the tempo runs as often as we used to, or the intervals, that the long runs could be a little longer and the easy days a little easier.
We race again.
Seems like you did the best you could…I mean it was pretty hot and your first one of the season. Are you doing strides for strokeon the 13th? That’s the first race I saw you at after seeing you for over a year always on the trail.
It is always hard to swallow when things don’t go the way they want them to. As I can certainly relate based on my first marathon attempt experience. In the grand scheme of things, you did a great job. 1st in your age group and 8th overall is wonderful. I know it’s hard to see it that way! I was frustrated today because my legs are still very heavy and I couldn’t turn over at a pace I was happy with. I ran just under a 10 minute mile pace and I wasn’t very happy. I don’t know if ithis is normal for post marathon recovery. Any advice on that one?
I get the whole 2009 was my high water mark thing. I feel the same way.
Enter as an alias. Go out fast, fast, fast then hold on. Ease back to normal race pace at mile 1.5 . Rest those tired legs then kill the last half mile. It is a 5k in our book and they are fun runs anyway. 21 minutes fttt!! Ive ran 4 hours in a row before.
Plan B: DNF hey that Klo Frap lady is a nobody anyway.
5ks require a short memory. Sounds like there are some things to pull from the race. Process those and get ready for the next
Some days everything comes up aces, some days it doesn’t. As long as you ran a smart race and gave what you had to give, I think you mark it as a good race. Your splits looked very nice and controlled.
YA so it wasn’t your best race blah, blah, blah! Sounds like you figured out what the deal is……DO MORE RACES! I think I recall someone telling me the same thing, uhmmmmmmm! Anyway, you still smoked a kick ass AG award and I am excited to see you get fired up for speed and running. :-)
Yup, move on to the next one. And good job on the AG result (sorry if I sounded a bit negative about that on FB) Here’s to future PRs!
everyone has those blah races however, AG award? still pretty freaking sweet. and a sick time, that’s right around my PR so don’t knock it girl
as for warming up, i’ve only done 1 5k but i warmed up for ~30 minutes before the race. i figured with a race so short i needed to be all primed to go when the gun went off
Flo – Cut yourself some slack – it was HOT! Besides, look at the bright-side – your pacing was excellent, best demonstrated by your progressively faster splits (requiring a TON of race discipline… that I wish I had.)
What’s memorial day?
Racing is good practise for racing – especially short races, from which, recovery is quick. By the look of those splits, I’d say you did a Joe Garland — your best on the day.
Also, you’ve been working on your form lately, so it’s all not going to come together in an instant. Patience girl!
Comparison to ourselves (and others) hurts us but we all do it. I completely understand comparing ourselves to our last race and being disappointed. Heck, I did it on Saturday. I try and remember that a river is never the same, that each moment is new and for me to compare races isn’t fair (but like I said, I do it anyway). Onto the next race!