Notes
Hot day today with dew point at a minimum of 18. Still had some DOMs and felt warm-up didn't go the greatest cutting my strides too close to the start of the race. The course was pretty flat going through E.T Seton Park but was obviously long as I measured it on Google Maps at 5.13km. This would make my 5K adjusted time around 19:50.
Plan was to go out around 3:55 and take it from there. Ended up following a group of 5 guys from the start but I quickly let them gap me as I was worried about going too fast in the heat and blowing up. Right from the start legs also felt like they weren't turning over fluidly. Was a bit surprised to see the first couple of kms so slow as I felt strong and was pushing the pace a bit; at the same time I was still comfortably in tempo breathing. Caught up to two guys by the midway point and this gave me encouragement to continue pushing but I could feel my legs tiring and just not responding to attempted surges. One of the guys I caught was pulling away but he dragged me past 2 more guys putting me in third place. Was running the race ridiculously evenly but just couldn't find another gear until about 300m left. By now my breathing had accelerated but the biggest problem was the dead feeling in my legs. Throughout the race my cadence was pretty low, must be a result of tired legs (DOMs) and the humidity as I was just wasting too much energy cooling y body down and didn't have anything left to push the pace. Finished the last 300m around 3:33 pace but the guy ahead of me really took off so I had no chance of catching him.
Not sure where to go from here, I'm hoping it was just lower body fatigue and the heat that caused the poor performance as I was really hoping getting under 19:40. After the race I recovered well but did immediately grab water. I can't say I felt the heat during the race but at minimum it held me back from pushing too hard too early. Just seemed to run the whole race scared.