Saturday, August 06, 2005
Comfortably numb
Did the Striders 10km today, which was my first 10km race for a long time (October last year from memory - 36:22). Left my stopwatch at home in a distracted pre-race preparation, so I ran blind, and set out with the intention of running comfortably. Readers of my last entry would have known I was targetting 37:30 for the race. The uphills were a bit tough, but never pushed, and importantly for me, never felt the urge to ease off the pace (most of my races are a mental struggle not to ease off). Once I hit the turn-around and started on the downhill, I fell into a good pace. Uncle Dave, who I hadn't seen all race, passed me with about 1.5km to go, which was pretty much as the script dictated. However, I was able to up the pace fairly easily with about 400m to go, and only finished 1 second behind him in 37:06 - which given his training volume compared to mine, speaks tomes about his natural ability.
Despite being a fairly lacklustre time in the scheme of things, it felt great to have run so quickly so easily (ignore any suggestions by Uncle Dave that I was doing it tough!). Like last week's 5km (which felt MUCH tougher), I will be ignoring any temptation to focus on improving this time quickly (by doing things like fast 1km reps), but rather focus on increasing my miles, so that I can run a faster time at this sort of intensity, rather than moving into a new intensity zone. Ideally I would like to go close to 35 minutes on some solid mileage with a bit of threshold work thrown in, and use this as a base to build on with VO2 max work later in the year, and anaerobic work in the new year.
Once I warmed up - god was it cold (apparently 1 degree C at the start) - I felt absolutely stoked wtih my performance. Thursday's easy run was a textbook recovery run (see below) and it felt good to feel so comfortable and easy. By way of comparison, my body felt more tired after this run than today's race.
Tomorrow I have my first Striders STaR scheduled, although I will be pulling out at the 24km mark. Providing everything holds together, this week will pretty much signal a return to proper training, and the end of the age of excuses. All in all, life is good!
4/08/2005 2:15pm
Workout Type: Endurance - Short Endurance
Course: SAN
Distance: 8.25
Time: 40:26
Speed: 4:54 min/km
Average HR: 144
Comments: Easy recovery run - very controlled and easy - nothing more to say really
Target Pace: Recovery (5:10 min/km )
