Notes
Goal was sub 39, plan was to take it out at 3:54 pace and just keep pushing holding the pace as long as I can. Weather was just about ideal, didn't feel as cold as I expected it to feel and the wind wasn't so bad, maybe a 5-10 km/h wind mostly from the northeast so felt it most coming out of tommy Thompson and then again on Lakeshore and the last km in the beaches.
Warm up seemed to go ok, felt pretty loose so the mini taper definitely helped. Knew after 500m that I was on my game as the pace felt quite relaxed and yet I was clipping along at 3:44 pace. Decided to stay relaxed and re-evaluate after 1K. After hitting the 1K mart at 3:48 I was a little worried that I had gone out too fast but since I was feeling so relaxed just decided to maintain the effort and see where it takes me. About midway through the 2nd km I could see my pace had settled into the 3:51 range without intensity increasing so I figured I would just continue along at this effort until it started feeling too hard.
There was a lot of back and forth with runners up until 4K so I always had someone to push me to maintain pace. By 4K I still felt I was in tempo mode but it was now becoming a hard tempo so I knew my pace would have to drop slightly if I was to survive to the finish. As I approached the 5K turnaround I could see the clock in the 18:50's so my goal was just to make it to the turnaround by 19:17 as that would mean I just needed to run 20 minutes in the second half for a PB. Ended up hitting the turnaround at 19:09 so I knew I was in really good shape for a massive performance.
There were points up until the 8th K where I could see my pace dropping to the 3:58 range but I always had enough in reserve to make a concerted push to at least get back to 39 goal pace. By the end of 8K my breathing had become accelerated and my upper back started cramping up a bit. I'm not sure why my pace dropped so dramatically during the 9th K although part of it could have been Garmin measuring the 8th K short and the 9th K long. I may have also let up slightly in the 9th K to save myself for the final K. I knew after 7K that I just needed 4 minute kms to get a PB but these calculations were really conservative and I never really bothered to calculate what I needed for sub 39. It didn't really hit me how much under sub 39 pace I was until I hit the 9K mark at around 34:53. I was sort of shocked to see that sub 39 was pretty much guaranteed. This just fueled me to increase the intensity even more.
The last K was tough with me looking at my watch every 200m to make sure I was still on pace. By 9.6 I was still only clipping along at 3:56 but figured I still had one last push. I looked at my watch one last time with about 250m left and saw the time in the high 37's so I gave myself a minute to finish the race, just counting steps as I got closer to the line. Took note of the clock around 38:30 and then just gave everything to finish strong.
Immediately after my right calf seized up just as in previous Tannenbaum's. Cooldown still went ok and the calf seems to be loosening up a bit this evening. Really happy to close the year with a PB as it seems like everything came together in the last 2 weeks starting with the confidence I gained from Holly Jolly. Now I just need to get L/ back on track.