Monday, September 05, 2005
Knot the greatest race
After playing it coy for the last few races, I decided to set a big public goal of sub 35-minutes for the Strider's 10km on Saturday, with the aim of running fairly even 3:30/km splits. Felt great over the first km, and despite deliberately holding myself back, went through in 3:23. The second km was also sub 3:30, and I was feeling comfortable. At about 3km, however, irony decided to strike. I had been listening to Pat Carrol's interview with Steve Monegetti on the way to the race, and his advice for race day was to control the things you could control. One of these things would be doing your shoelaces up properly, but for the first time I can recall, my lace came undone. Cursing to myself (acutally I think it was a bit louder than that), I stopped to do it up, but a combination of cold hands and a desire to get back on the pace saw me do a single knot. Managed to get back on 3:30 pace, although probably a bit sooner than was prudent. Sure enough, just before 5km, the shoelace went again, and a longer delay (involving a double knot) ensued. Sub-35 was officially out the window, and the focus was on salvaging the race.
Felt pretty demotivated from 5-7km (not least because a rampaging Marty Harris shot past me at the turn-around), but wasn't running flat-out, and was pacing nicely off Cameron Arnold. When he went after a runner in front, I went with him, and at that point started to feel strong again. Went past a few people between 8 and 9km and then picked up the pace to sub 3:20 for the last km, crossing the line in 35:39. From conservative estimates, I would have lost at least 40 seconds tying my laces (I will ALWAYS do double knots from now on) so theoretically I ran 10km in less the 35 minutes!
Despite the turn of events, I got a lot of positive encouragement out of the race - mainly to be back running at that pace so easily, and off so little training (this didn't hit home until I did a monthly summary recently, and noticed I'd only done 50km a month in May and June, meaning July and August have been my only real training months). Once again the temptation to change my training to chase short-term improvements is great (particularly with a certain Mr Harris setting the pace), but as I slowly start to introduce more VO2 max work into my training, these improvements should come anyway. A while back I said that I wanted to run 10km under 35 minutes purely on strength training, and I pretty much accomplished that on Saturday, so I am very happy with the way things are going. I am feeling really motivated about my running right now, and will be now focusing on two things:
a) sticking to the program - not chopping and changing runs, and certainly not MISSING any through poor time planning
b) focusing on the supplemental activities - stretching, strength work, diet, rest, warm-up and cool-down. The current program is working well, so my main risk is getting injured and I will try and do everything I can to avoid that.
Took advantage of the Father's Day lie-in card to avoid the Sunday morning rain. Headed out at just before 6:00pm, and knowing I had to be back to do a the 7:00 bath, did an easy 14km in 68:39.
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Sparkie, glad to hear your pacing is back up there - that's a great time regardless of the shoe problems. But mate, you have to get the zipp laces! Never been able to work out why you non-tri-guys don't use them ;)
Wow, Sparkie what a great run even with 2 pit-stops thanks to your shoelaces!! Don't forget to double-knot them before the Half on Sunday. Good luck!! J.
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