March 4th, 2012
First off, great race. Shitty time, but I accomplished some important things. In fact, I take back “shitty time”, it was actually the pace I predicted to my 3:20 forum friends (who called me a sandbagger, the cuties). I figured I’d be doing low 7:00s because my 3mi tempo last week was at that pace and I couldn’t imagine holding anything faster for twice that.
This was also the first race I’ve ever “trained through”. I’ve always been big on tapering properly, taking the 2nd day before the race off, then a shakeout with strides the day before. Always. But because this was a rustbuster (not only for the season but back from injury) keeping my head free of bad crap was of the utmost importance. A purposeful amount of self-sabotage was just the thing – it totally took the pressure off.
Thursday I did 19mi, Fri was 15.25 but then at the last minute, yesterday I took an unscheduled rest day. It had been 3½ weeks since I’d had one, it was a rainy morning and I was sniffly so I shushed my inner mileage whore and kept my ass indoors.
| AM | PM | |
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Mon:
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7@8:38 | 8@8:16 |
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Tues:
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5@8:44 | 8@7:44 3x(1,2,3min) |
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Wed:
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8@8:45 | |
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Thurs:
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7@8:21 | 12@7:55 |
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Fri:
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7.25@8:39 | 8@8:04 |
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Sat:
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||
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Sun:
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9.25 w/10k | (includes wu and cd) |
| Total: | 79.5 miles | |
Last Night
I started reading “10 Minute Toughness” and damn, that is a great book. I’m going to review it in the next post because I think everyone should get a copy. It really helped me get my head in order and armed me with a couple important tools for the race. Most importantly, it made me realize that I always think negatively during my warmup, “I’m slow, why are my strides so slow? etc” so I start races in a bad head to begin with. I didn’t let that happen this time and I used the deep breathing exercise before the gun went off; that was super helpful, I’ll be doing more of that.
The Race
2.5 miles warmup (more than I usually do but I was all WTF today). It was 40 degrees out with a 10mi headwind which, btw, was another thing I wasn’t stressing about. Usually I’d be angsty about the wind since this race is on the river and I get my wind numbers from an inland weather station (so windier than what is reported) but I kept my environmental worries at bay. Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be.
Gun goes off and we run into the fucking wind 
for about 2.5 of the first 3 miles. Not a lot of movement, the women who went ahead stayed there, I wasn’t even tempted to bridge the distance. Me and another woman were running together for a while, then she dropped off at about mile 2. Right before that, my pal Steph passed running the other way and told me I was 6th. Then another woman came from behind and went ahead, and that was our order till the end.
While I was great with keeping my mental crap at a minimum, even while seeing 7:07 (I gave up on the watch early, just made a point to keep my place) my breath was as horrible as it gets. This is a major problem with me sometimes and I hate it: I wheeze, not a little wheeze either. It’s not the first time I apologized to a guy as I passed for being so loud. If you were anywhere near me at mile 3 on, you’d have sworn I was about to drop out, it’s that labored and ragged.
So anyway, I was on the heels of two guys for the way back and apologized to the one I dropped in the last mile, the other guy looked behind him at one point and I know it’s because he was sick of hearing my noise for 2.5 miles.
Meanwhile, some other stranger on the park path tells me I’m 6th, which is so cool when people out of nowhere seem to care. She came up to me after when I was waiting around for awards and told me it looked like I was flying (as did the lady I was running with at the beginning). A sweet thing to hear.
Results
43:46, 1st AG 50-59, 6th Female, Age-Grade: 79.24%. Splits were 6:55, 7:07, 7:00, 6:57, 7:07, 6:50, 6:40ish pace for the end. Garmin was long so .08 needs to be absorbed into the total but I’m too lazy to do it.
Conclusions
I’m not embarrassed by my time. No taper, 80 mile week after 91, just returned to fast stuff recently, windy chilly day…seems fine. Lots of excuses? Yeah, but screw it, they’re valid.
Here’s why I’m not worried: when I did this race in 2009, my next 10k six weeks later (which I’m doing this year as well) was 2 minutes faster – and I tapered that year. Two minutes is a lot but between the weather, more workouts, more races, 5lbs left to lose and some tapering, I’m confident of considerable improvement in the coming weeks.
Incidentally, I’ve got a race every other week from now till May 6th (with 2 consecutive weekend races in April) which I’ll talk about in detail in my next post.
In the meantime, I think I need to start researching the breathing thing, maybe give belly breathing a real look-see. Being self-conscious about how you sound on the race course is aggravating and to feel compelled enough to waste breathe apologizing for it is embarrassing and non-helpful to my mental game.
But aside from that one thing, this race was a success.
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Great job on the AG win Flo! I am assuming our weather conditions were the same this morning, and the headwind to me was brutal. Nice week, nice race, nice all around.
Congrats to you, too! Moreso, you had a fantastic race. Very happy for you (and glad you’re loving the Adios, too).
I wheeze in every race distance but the marathon. Probably a little asthma. My approach: don’t worry about it.
Didn’t know you did, too, misery loves company. Can’t help but feeling I could be getting deeper breathes though. Didn’t help that at one point, these fast local guys I recognized passed me from behind (I think they were pacing someone) and said to me “nice racing” while I was wheezing like a dying freak.
If your wind was anything like ours, it was horrid.
This sounds like an awesome rustbuster.
Yup, repurposing the negative thoughts is something I’ve been working at a lot. It’s just undoing the negative voice. I make a point of telling myself “I am going to have a good workout” — it works.
At one point, I thought of you while racing, Cris! Your natural approach to it and the good mental place you’ve found. That just popped up for a bit.
Awesome AG win and pretty damn good in the OA placings too. The wind was definitely a factor today. I’d say your rust-busting return to racing was a solid success! Congrats girl!
Oh, and I sound like a Mac truck at the end of every race. I just go with it. I used to be embarassed but who cares? At least people can get out of my way in time. :-)
Thanks hon, congrats on your great day as well! And lol on the Mac truck comin’ through.
I don’t like it because it makes people think I’m struggling and also, they know I’m there – I’d prefer to be more stealth. I also think it could be holding me back.
Sounds like bad conditions. Congratulations on a great rustbuster, and the 1st AG place !
Wasn’t that bad conditions, just sorta bad.
Thanks!
You know your breathing better than anyone and if you feel like it’s a hinderance or holding you back, it’s definitely worth looking into any possible solutions. I’d be interested too, because it’d be nice to actually have a stealth factor for once.
And this was supposed to go under my other comment but I keep getting a stack overflow error when I try that – stupid stack overflow.
Oh pooh on the error, big points for you trying to put it in the right place though.
I just read something interesting that is a start, it was a comment on a pithy RW article, but I thought it worthy since it’s coming from someone who needs to know such things. It’s interesting if you make the different sounds, I totally think I’m in the ah/ee area for racing. I’ll try thinking “Oh” in my next speed thing, see if that’s helpful.
“I am a clarinet player, and this is how they teach you to breathe (belly breathing, that is) when starting a wind instrument. I carried this over to my running about a year ago, and boy if it doesn’t make a HUGE difference. If you’re having a difficult time belly breathing, practice breathing in deeply “saying” the following vowel sounds: “Ohhh, Ahhhhh, Eeeee”. This helps fill up the lungs form the bottom (oh) middle (ah) and top (ee) and helps you distinguish the difference. I hope every distance runner gives this a shot if they aren’t already!”
Thanks for the info. I have more noise on exhalation than intake and not really a wheeze but more of an Eee – Huuunnhhh! (Can’t really translate it :-)) I’ve had a few runners try to coach me on my breathing at the end of a race – DUDES, I’M FINE! :-)
I think I’d want to slap the shit out of those guys.
I’d say that’s quite the solid effort, young lady! Keep up the confidence in the things ahead, keep training in between your ears, and watch out!
Thanks missy! You’re the queen of between the ears.
Great effort Flo! I started belly breathing about 6 months ago. Still requires concentration or I revert.
Interesting, seems like I’m unwittingly following you around between this and massage.
Questions…Do you feel you get more air or that it’s easier to maintain hard efforts? Also, were you noisy prior to that? Lastly (sorry to quiz you) do you have any great links on it worth sharing?
“Programmed to Run”. Thomas S Miller
Never was noisy. He gives good explanation on why should breath this way. Also stresses need to concentrate on fully exhaling.
I have that book! Great! I’ll reread it, thanks.
I agree- the race was a success. Sounds like a brutal headwind and you paced it well. I can’t imagine racing after all that high mileage. Thanks for the book recommendation (here and on my blog). I’ll definitely look into it.
Thanks dollface, though I need to say it wasn’t “brutal” just a pain in the ass.
For the record, I was not amongst the “sandbagger” chorus. Nice job in the conditions Flo, and hey, 1st AG and 79%! As for the breathing, I have no experience, but there are some elites who suffer from exercise-induced athsma, including Geb I believe.
I know and I always appreciate your sensible voice of reason. While it’s flattering when people think you can do better, it’s also somewhat disconcerting because it infers you’re fucking up if you don’t get near that (ie choruses of sub 1:30 last September).
I also believe it’s time to take the mileage back a bit, as you mentioned. Too many races ahead, it’ll be impossible to keep it up and race/recover well.
One thing about the breath: when I keeled over last time they gave me an asthma test but it came out negative. I do get a lot of mucous and spit a ton in this weather, so that’s probably connected.
Great to hear that things went pretty much as you had envisioned! The 1st one of the season is always very interesting…if not very fast! As runners, the weather is often NOT OUR FRIEND!! I think half of my handful of races last year had sustained winds of 10mph+, and my 2012 opener last month saw 12 mph sustained and a wind chill of -16! I had to log book my time for that 4 miler as a 7:12 pace, but I KNOW it was easily a 6:50ish effort (and I made that point in my log as well!!!…brain candy, if you will! ).Point is: perceived effort, I think, is often times more important than the damn clock! Especially early in the racing season like we’re now in. Anyway…you’re doin’ great and given that you’ve only been doing this “stuff” for on a very few years (5 I think you said??), you’ve got a lot of room for improvement, and it sounds like you have the dedication and talent to achieve all you possibly can. One great thing you have going for you is that you didn’t start running until a few ears ago. You don’t have 30 and 40 year old log books that you can take to bed every night to read and weep over! LOL!
Lol on the log book weeping! And man, -16 wind chill? You are a stud to race in that, though living up north you have to be. Btw, if you want to feel better, check out this chart, it says your 7:12 in -16 was worth about a minute. Sweet.
Awesome job pacing, Flo and great comeback! I was thinking about you and hoping to hear good news from you all morning.
Aw, thank you sweet Carrie, you’re a love!
Excellent first-up race Flo. Your place and 79% says it all. Agree that you’ll take minutes out of that considering the conditions, training through, first race rust etc.
On the breathing thing, think about the Powerbreathe http://www.powerbreathe.com/ When I was using it I found it helped quite a bit, even though I don’t have breathing issues. Only stopped because breathing is not the weak link in my running at the moment.
Wow, now that’s a contraption! Reminds me of a hospital rehab device a friend had to use. I found some reviews on discussion boards (tri athlete and runners) and it’s not a very well-liked item.
But it’s interesting!
It works well (definitely improves the strength of breathing muscles). I only got up to level 3 on the 0 to 10 scale, but the one I bought was for ‘male sportsmen’ or something – had a very strong spring. Don’t buy that one!
I notice when I race that most people are wheezing a lot MORE than I am, whether I am passing them or they are passing me. I take that to mean I am not working hard enough. I reckon anyone noticing how hard you are breathing are probably thinking that they themselves are not working hard enough, especially if you pass them and leave them in the dust.
If elite runners wheezed than the “working hard” argument would make sense.
Be glad you don’t and that your breathing is in control. Effort level should tell you if you’re working hard enough, noise isn’t something you want to shoot for. Frankly, I don’t like to be around wheezing runners – to me, it sounds like they’re struggling badly.
Heeeeey, lady! Regardless of any time on the clock, you had a major break-through. The racing cobwebs are GONE! Seriously, you can say whatever you want, but going that long without doing a race has to do a little something to your head. It’s great to have that “first” race behind you b/c now you body knows that you expect those types of efforts again.
It also seems as though everywhere in the country was windy this weekend. Haha. And, weather is NOT excuse, especially wind. Did you know in high school state qualifying meets, they will adjust the times for wind? Yep, that’s because the wind is NOT an excuse; it’s legit.
Great job on 6th female and the AG WIN!! Whoohooo! It’s only up from here!
Hah! Thanks for the wind tidbit, makes me feel just a modicum less Excusey
. I’m gonna try to be done with the excuse train from here on in, gonna give my best shot without ifs, ands or buts. Big hugs for the props, I do feel so much better now that that one’s out of the way. P.S. Major congrats again for such a great race this last weekend! You stud.