(Considering that I have my next race tomorrow, I felt obligated to finish the blog post from my last race 3 weeks ago 🙂 )
In fall 2013 my training was heavily bike focused, which normally means that the run times “suffer” somewhat. In December I had a surprising good 10k. This race would be an interesting one to see where my run fitness actually is. The pacing guideline from my coach called for a starting mile in 6min. After that I should settle to a 5:55-6min/mile using the least amount of energy as possible to run that pace. It was a two loop course around a lake, the first half was in the shade and the roads were still icy and slippery because of frost. Before the start I talked to two people who looked fast and they told me that they plan to run a 6min/mile respectively a 6:10min/mile.
I started together with these two guys and one other guy which took really big steps and looked pretty inefficient. The slippery roads made running sometimes difficult and also mentally more taxing early on in the race. The fast guy and the inefficient guy started to take off. I was wondering how long the inefficient guy could keep his pace up? I settled in 3rd and tried to maintain a 6min/mile which is probably on the faster side considering all the uphill. After about 2 miles a guy from behind overtook me and I quickly lost some distance on him. On a downhill I decided to catch up and stay with him. Around that time a spectator made a comment that I shouldn’t let the 55 year old get away 🙂 Eventhough we mostly ran right around the 6min/mile it was pretty hard for me to stay on his heels. Especially considering that I tried not to spend too much energy. The first two guys were still within sight and didn’t pull that far away. At that point, I was still thinking that I potentially could catch up to them in the last few miles if the gap wouldn’t get bigger. For a while the inefficient guy was leading the race by like 50 yards. Eventually the 2nd guy caught him and we were closing in on him. At mile 6 during an uphill, I let the guy in front of me pull away slightly at which points my quads were already heavy. Just before we finished the first loop the inefficient guy had to tie his shows and the guy in front of me and I passed him.
I went buy the race clock in 38min which didn’t seem right to me (in the end I learned that the race clock was 1min behind). The icy road was much worse the 2nd time around. Most probably because all my stabilizers muscles were tired already and I slipped a couple times and fell almost twice. I normally don’t mind running on snowy/icy roads. But racing on an icy road without snow (no grip) can be very frustrating when you push of the ground and your foot slips backwards. I tried my best to stay withing range with the guy in front of me. I was confident I could still out sprint him at the end. I noticed that big blisters were forming on the bottom of the feet which had me a little worried. Normally I don’t notice blisters till after the race when the adrenaline goes away. So I was wondering how bad it already was. The 2nd loop had a little out and back to add the necessary distance. I saw that the first guy was about 200 yards ahead. I was about 100 yards behind the 2nd guy and about 200 yards in front of 3rd and 4th.
On the uphills my quads really started to burn and I had to push hard to get up and hope that on top in the flat my legs would recover which they mostly did. But it was draining. Around mile 10 I hit a weak spot, I suddenly was in a negative thought spin and I forced myself to be positive. And I reminded myself that I had my best races when I stayed in control on top of things. And at that moment the sun started shining a little stronger. I had to smile, this must be a sign. Well it only lasted another 20 seconds till I was struggling again but I tried to stay in control. Once I reached the last mile, I already had given up on catching the guy in front of me, at this point it was just holding on for 3rd place. Not sure what the inefficient guy was doing but I could hear him yelling behind me. Naturally, I increased my pace but soon after I noticed that I could not maintain it, I had to slow down just a little and push really hard not to fall apart completely. I saw the clock just on 1:19, but I didn’t even have enough left to finish sub 1:20 and just wanted it to be over. If I only hadn’t slowed down at the finish line I cold have had the sub 1:20 instead I finished in 1:20:00.9
My average heart rate was 178bpm and I topped out at 186bpm. This was the first half marathon of the season and I was unbelievable sore. It took me almost 5 days to recover. Especially mentally.
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