Today's workout was pretty straight forward - start running when they say 'GO', don't stop until you cross the finish line, and suffer a sustainable amount in between.
All in all, this race went about as ideally as I could have hoped. At the start, there were four pacers - 7:30, 8, 8:30 and 9. I found my spot between the 7:30 and 8, and for once the pacer was really good. It seems that in any race I've been in, the pacers are impossible to find once the crowd gets beyond the starting corrall. We started off, and of course a bunch of people passed me right off the bat, but when I looked at my watch, I was right in the pace range I was looking for - about 7:30. So the fact I was getting passed didn't bother me because I knew I'd end up passing a bunch of these same people over the course of the race (I find it works better for me to start off the first couple miles on the slower side, until my legs warm up). At about the 1.5 mile mark, I caught sight of the 7:30 pacer, and for the next half mile or so, there was a cluster of 7-8 of us around him. When we passed the two mile mark, we were just about on the money for a 7:30 pace - 14:48 minutes. I was pretty impressed that the pacer was so close to the mark.
At that point, though - I felt like I was ready to start what would be my target race pace of about 7:15-7:20 for the bulk of the run. So I shifted to the outside of the cluster of people, and pushed on ahead. As the miles ticked by, there was one guy who I passed around mile 4 or so, who then passed me shortly thereafter. I resisted the urge to 'burn a match' to pass him, because that would likely get my HR up into the mid 170's - and I was fairly comfortable where I was between 168 and 172 or so. Plus, at this point in the course, there was some terrain. Not a lot, but just enough to notice the pace dropping a tad and/or the HR spiking. I knew from running the course previously that miles ~6 through about ~9 had a couple minor uphills, so I definitely didn't want to push it too much at this point where I still had half the race to go.
Then something wierd happened between miles 6 and 8 - my HR dropped a bit, into the mid 160's, even though my pace was being maintained. In some cases, I could tell there was a gradual downhill, which certainly explains it. But I did make a mental note that I was surprised it was dropping a bit like it was.
For the most part, miles 2-10 were pretty much all the same - pace just a tad behind someone, and then at some point, overtake them. I felt like Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder, when the pit crew thinks Cole is speeding up, and he says 'I'm not speeding up! Everyone else is slowing down!' and then the lap timers confirm it (that he wasn't speeding up). In my case, I was passing people - but when I looked at my pace, I was generally at a 7:12 pace +/- 10 seconds.
It was somewhere around mile 10 that I started making up ground on my old friend (who was always within sight) from mile 4. I passed him and never saw him again, but I think I heard his footsteps behind me for about a mile. At this point I knew I had just enough left in the bag to pick up the pace just a little bit more - around 6:55. My only hope was that I wouldn't burn out - I felt reasonably confident I'd be able to sustain it, but you never really know. I did end up slowing down briefly right around the 12.5 mile mark - but not long after that I must have gotten a shot of adrenaline, because for a few seconds I suddenly felt no pain, and blew by a trio of people at a 6 min/mile pace with less than a half mile to go. Unfortunately, those shots of adrenaline don't last long, and a half mile at a pace on the very top end of your zone is a long time. Long enough for you to flame out and crash pretty hard (which I did in the last 1/4 mile of the Thanksgiving 5 miler this past year). I did crash a bit - I saw my HR into the 180's and my windpipe was not allowing me to get as much air as my body wanted, but it was a 6:45 min/mile pace crash before I was able to muster up another last push into the finish.
The end result was a new PR by about five minutes - a spot on 1:35:00 vs the 1:40:24 from November 2011 (previous PR). Considering I was still a bit sore this morning from the legs workout on Wednesday (!), I'm pretty damn happy about that. I still have a goal of breaking 1:30 for a half in 2012, and I think that is attainable - but it is going to take some solid threshold pace workouts.
Garmin Data
So, what this means is that the ole' VDOT moves up from 45 to 47, which brings my easy running pace down from 9:17 to 8:58, which is much more in line with what I've found my pacing to be at an easy pace HR (mid 140's).
No comments:
Post a Comment