Today was the first, and probably one of the relative few, races of the season. I saw relative few because I'm not the kind of person to enter in a race every week or even every couple weeks. For one thing, the entry fees would start adding up, and for another thing - I dont need a race to go out and run a certain distance.
However, I think races still have a place in a training regiment. They give you something in the relative short term to shoot and stay motivated for. Also, depending on the race, it may be a good opportunity to do some hill training, or to help establish a 'race-pace' baseline. No matter how much you try (or, at least for me) - the motivation to push myself at a high level of intensity just isn't there during a normal solo run. So I think throwing in a race every so often can be good for speed work as well.
And that was the exact attitude I took towards this 10K in Holyoke today. I wasn't gunning for a specific or goal time, but I was just looking to get some hill work in. I wasn't going to be too concerned with time or pace. This was also a race I was running in with my dad. While he kinda had a hopeful goal pace in mind, he had also indicated that he seemed less concerned with time and more concerned about just having a good workout.
Any ideas that I may have had about us running the course together (like we did for the half marathon) were pretty much shot right away. With a rather large group (almost 4000!) of people, and a starting line that just isn't quite set up to handle that many participants, we got separated pretty quickly. I kept him in visual range for the first half mile or so, but by that time I was having troubles with the HR monitor strap, and it was sliding down my torso. Normally when I go for a run, I wet the elastic portion and that allows it to stick to the skin long enough for perspiration to take care of it from there. However, in this case we have over an hour long wait before the starting gun - so by the time we got going, the band had lost all ability to stick. I considered the idea of just letting it fall down to my waist, and forego any monitoring this race. But then I decided to suck it up, pull it off, retighten the strap, and put it back on. Screw potential embarassment. Unfortunately, by this time I had lost sight of my dad.
This course was flat for the first mile or so, but then the next 3 miles was hilly - mostly the up kind. As I said previously - I wasn't looking for a particular finish time, so I initially thought I'd take it easy and take my time going uphill. However, a funny thing happens with my legs when I'm in a race. They dont want to slow down from a pace. However, my current pace was going to pose a potential problem because I was already well into the 160's and sometimes in the 170's for HR. Would I be able to keep this intensity up? Heh - I kinda doubted it.
But, the hills kept coming and the mile markers ticked by. My pride was too big to allow me to slow down much and witness more than a couple people passing me. If I slowed down, that would be like admitting defeat and poor planning for starting out too fast in the first place! Doubly true when I'd see someone stop and walk within the first 2 miles, and had thoughts of 'started out too fast, didja?'
I never said my pride is actually intelligent. On the contrary, I know full well that holding back and being reserved in the beginning oftentimes ends up translating to better times overall. At least, theoretically - from what I've read. Never actually tried it!
During the whole time, I kept looking for my dad after we got separated. He had recently said that he did a 10k distance in 54 minutes or so. At the mile markers the times were being shouted out by people with a stopwatch - and so I knew I was doing between an 8:30 and 9:00 pace. Since 54 minutes for 10k is about 9 min/mile - I figured I'd catch up to him within the first couple miles - figuring he didn't get too far ahead of me during my HR monitor strap fiasco. But I never saw him.
So, in the end I finished with an official time of around 52 minutes. It is hard to say, because I forgot to hit 'stop' on my watch when I crossed the finished line. By the time I realized it, the timer was at 54 minutes, so I'm guessing about 2 minutes had past. At some point, I'll check coolrunning.com to see what the official time is. However, the official time was about 30 seconds slower than my real time during the mile markers - because it took me about 30 seconds to reach the start line.
I eventually found my dad after the race, and found out he had finished in just over 50 minutes - a solid couple minutes ahead of me. I had previously thought maybe I passed him and didn't see him - but apparently not. It just turns out he can still run a good race! :)
More important than the time, though, was the good hill workout, and the fact that I felt like I found my hard-effort 10k HR intensity (probably about a 9 out of 10 on effort). I was pretty much at my limit for that distance - the bit of sprinting at the end was about all I had left in me, and a quick glance at the HR monitor showed my HR at 191, I think, during that sprint. That is definately getting towards HRmax for me.
Total Distance: 6.2 miles
Total Time: 52:49 minutes (chip time of 53:19)
Avg HR: 174
No comments:
Post a Comment