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10/7/2012

7:30 AM

21.1 km

1:34:56

7:15 mi

Health

131 lb
5438
47.9

Weather

Ratings

7 / 10
3 / 10

Race Result

286 / 4765 (6%)
5 / 388 (1.3%)
55 / 3429 (1.6%)

Notes

Mind games. Mind games.

Right from the start, I was feeling insecure. Still wouldn't stand up at the front, but definitely better than last year's start placement.

So we start and already I couldn't gauge my speed but that's not unusual, but I was pretty desperate to hit the 10K mat in an under 1:30 time. I accomplished that goal--barely.

I tried to not look at km or mile splits because I tend to panic, but caught myself looking at about 5K and saw that I was at like 20 minutes or so. This made me a little happier until I hit Beacon Hill Park. It's funny, I do much bigger hills in the trails much faster. I do intervals much faster in the trails. But this tiny little hill seems insurmountable to me. Every incline seemed insurmountable. The breathing, tho, was still all good.

So all uneventful until the 10K mat where I looked at my watch and on my watch, it said 42:xx (don't remember)...that made me pretty happy. Figured that I had some playing around time in case things went awry. Well, I guess that's exactly when I started to slow. And then I saw the leaders starting to come back from their loop...and that just deflated me. Should just learn to run my own race for now. I was a bit choked later to find out my 10K split was 43:43 :( . Maybe if I'd seen that, I wouldn't have slowed as much.

Again uneventful til KM 16. The breathing, all of a sudden, went ragged and just couldn't get air in. Run. Run. Run. Every time I told myself to go faster, I slowed and sounded worse. But I keep going. At least I talked myself out of stopping. It was pretty nice to hear people calling out your name to cheer for you. I felt bad because I didn't even smile at them. I thought if I looked, I might actually stop. Also around the 16K mark, my right calf started to balk--almost the same location on the course as last year's HM. The twingeing didn't stop but I didn't slow.

Was really, really ragged breathing by 18K. Then people were started to speed up. Tried to go with them. Nope. But I didn't lose too many spots. Really disappointed in my finish. I put 800 metre runners to shame with my no-speed finish. Just couldn't make the legs go anywhere!

So, done. Gun time: 1:35:28. Not what I wanted, but still on the right track. Going to keep going with the mileage; stairs; core; intervals; tempo; fartlek; track; x-country; 5ks, 10ks, 15ks...and maybe, just maybe, next HM will be a good one! Glad I did this and came out pretty much unscathed :)

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