As I sit here three days after my recent 5k PR I am pretty happy. My happiness isn’t because of the PR or the race even; it’s about the prospect for future performances. It was nice running 23:30; but it would have been nicer to run 23 flat or 22:30. I’m still a fairly new competitive runner so my potential is untapped and it is kind of a hindrance. I know I’m capable of much more, hell I’ve run faster training runs then I did in this race.
After my 5k (24:15) earlier this year; my coach mentioned that I could probably run a full minute faster soon. Four months later, I did that and I still had more left in the tank. At first look at the splits, it makes the race seem pretty disjointed. I took some time to look at the actual splits broken down in Half Mile and Quarter Mile increments. I was surprised at how even each individual mile was run.
This break down shows me that my race was not fluid and while I can be happy with the breakdown I need to work more on running a continuous, even race. I believe I could have saved some time by just running more evenly throughout the race. I expect the first and last mile to be different as I account for dodging people in the front and ‘kicking’ at the end. This may not affect me to bad now with these shorter races but come Marathon morning I believe that this is the type of the thing that will cause a really bad race and probably an even worse experience all around.
Upcoming workouts:
Friday, Aug 6
5 mile easy run w/4 strides
Saturday, Aug 7
4 mile easy run
Sunday, Aug 8
18 mile with 6 x 5 min hills @ marathon effort. Then 5 strides.
"The essential thing in life is not so much conquering as fighting well"
~Baron De Coubertin
No comments:
Post a Comment