Wednesday, September 14, 2005
A week and a Half
A week of tapering also saw some tapering (or total abandonment) of my blogging. So a brief recap of the week. leading up to the half.
Monday I did a set of 6 x 600s in 2 minutes, with a 300m jog recovery. Short and sharp, and pretty comfortable. Tuesday was an easy 14km in 62:48, but come Wednesday morning my legs were feeling the effects of the 38km I'd done since the 10km race on Saturday, and followng some sensible advice from the CoolRunning fraternity, I had a day off. Easy 8km on Thursday, no running Friday and an easy Saturday seemed like an ideal taper, yet for some reason my legs felt wrecked on Saturday morning, and when I jogged to the station at 5:30am on Sunday, I felt like crap. It was looking like a tough race, but when I feel like this, it usually turns out OK.
A fairly detailed description of my race is on CoolRunning so I won't reiterate too much. Main facts from the race:
- 79.40 finishing time - slower than i was hoping for, but looking at other results, very pleasing
- had a great race, with a strong second half that pretty much saw me evenly split the race (37:40 and 38:00 for the two 10km splits)
- had a great duel with Cam Arnold over the last 3.1 km, and managed a very strong finish, with the last km in 3:05 (it
As this race was primarily a test of my base fitness, I was very happy to run so strongly. Without being arrogant, I ran within myself, and had plenty left at the finish (even if it didn't feel like it at times). This is not to say that I cruised the race - I couldn't have run much faster - but rather, I was still running in a lower gear, and there is pleny of potential to build on this base (although I won't be doing another half till next winter). I will talk about my training philosophy for the next three months in my next post, but to achieve this result on low miles and virtually no fast work, was encouraging to say the least.
An interesting thing I noticed. I was struggling after about 6km (which was run in 21:48 - 3:34/km), and the City-West link during a downpour is not the most uplifting of places. At the turn-around I had dropped back to over 3:45/km and wasn't feeling too flash. Then as I passed runners coming in the other direction, and starting getting encouragement (the CoolRunning singlet being fairly prominent), I subconciously lifted, and got myself back into the race. Never underestimate the value of a cheer if you are tempted to give one - I am deeply indebted to everyone who did.
After the race, I spent a couple of hours cheering the marathon folk in on the Cahill Expressway, which was both a brilliant ad for CoolRunning, and quite an emotional experience on its own - to see people raise a smile after 41kms, or offer their thanks for the encouragement (some Japanese people stopped to shake everyone' hand) more than compensated for standing on tired legs in the sun. Big kudos to the Owl, who started this tradition at the SMH Half, although she places the credit with Aunty Karin at Canberra. Nonetheless, a great tradition that is being replicated at races around the country.
With the Half out of the way, it has signalled the end of my unfortunately brief base-building, and marked the transition into faster racing, and a proper focus on the Double Decathlon.
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Sparkie, that was a solid effort in those conditions. I fully agree with your comments regarding running within yourself. I felt like this too - couldn't have run much faster but still never felt like I was going flat out. In fact I was confident I could have kept up the same pace for another 5-10k or so.
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