FYP. You made some subconscious decisions, if you'd actually been running "as fast as you possibly could" you would have burned out pretty quickly.
I know what you mean, and I obviously wasn't actually running as fast as I could, but it just felt that way. I guess I was just wondering if there was something in my brain holding me back without me having to talk to myself. I know I sound completely crazy, but it seems like April knows what I mean. I came across some across something that might be related recently. I'll see if I can dig it up ... because everything you read on the internet is true
Are we there, yet?
I was actually thinking about something similar recently and was going to ask you guys. Do we have an internal pace clock? I've raced 3 different distances this year, and it seems like each time I was going as fast as I possibly could. At no point did I ever say ok this is 10k pace, lets lock into this, or this is too fast, too slow, etc. So I wondered if there is some kind of subconscious mojo happening.
I think we do and that's at least part of what Amby it writing about. It's another question whether that is inate or learned. I know my ability to hit a particular pace is learned, but that's different from "knowing" what pace you can hold in a race for a specific distance. Even with my years of experience, when it comes to race day, the pace going into the race that I think is what I can run isn't always the pace that I can and do run. That's one of the reasons why I don't run by Garmin pace or even my first mile split. All that tells me is what pace I am running, not what pace I should run. It's that internal sense of appropriate effort that tells me if I'm too fast or too slow.
2024 Races:
03/09 - Livingston Oval Ultra 6-Hour, 22.88 miles
05/11 - D3 50K 05/25 - What the Duck 12-Hour
06/17 - 6 Days in the Dome 12-Hour.
Go figure
I have to say, after reading the article, I feel a little "meh" about the whole thing. Here's one of the lines that, on it's face, resonates with me: "In other words, they used one or several of these tools to pick a goal pace faster than their actual race-day fitness." Clearly, racing beyond one's fitness isn't going to go very well.
Still, if you think about it a little more, what's wrong with setting an ambitious race goal if you, the runner, are okay with risking failure. If the runner isn't just trying for his best race on that day, but for his best time ever, racing just based on brain-body input may eliminate that chance if he's feeling badly at the start. If I were really going after a goal, I'd rather push out at my goal pace and hope that I could get beyond the discomfort. Of course, this assumes that I have the confidence in my training going in that I can meet my goal. On sub-optimal training, the brain-body approach seems like a great strategy.
As for a line that didn't resonate with me, it's this: "In fact, get rid of all the fancy, external equipment." Considering my past marathon, there's no way that I could have run the race I just did without the feedback I got from my GPS. In the early miles, checking in frequently kept me from going too fast, when almost any pace felt easy. In the late miles, it allowed me to determine if my perceived effort matched the pace that I was actually running. If I felt like I was running 6:30s, and they were really 6:50s, I would have known I was in big trouble and needed to back off. Maybe more experienced runners with a better pace feel could successful use Amby's pace strategy, but I think for me it would have been trouble.
I'm not saying I disagree completely with the article. When my pace suddenly quickened around the half point of my last marathon, it was only intentional to an extent. Something in my body knew that I could handle increasing the pace - I could feel that I was ready for it, so I pushed a little more. But I didn't calculate that I was suddenly going to speed up by 11 seconds, or some similar number. So there definitely is something to the brain-body connection, but I almost think it's more akin to the internal pace clock you guys have been discussing. I also would say that BB makes sense as a tool for running a great time. It just shouldn't be the only tool in the box.
Trying to find some more hay to restock the barn