Well my first 10k was probably the worst race of my life. Not sure what happened, I felt good going, in the last month I have been setting PB’s in almost every workout etc. On Tuesday my 6 mile tempo at 35:15 which is 5:53/mile was easy faster than my race pace on Sunday’s 10k 37:51 which is a 6:05 per mile. So what happened? I think there are a few reasons I raced so poorly:
1) after km 3 I realized I wasn’t going to hit my time so I switched to auto-pilot never really pushed until the last 800m.
2) There was no one for me to race against, if Joel or Jo from VFAC were there I would have stepped up in hopes of beating them. I still cannot race by time/pace this is something I will have to learn. In trail running I had a legit shot of winning so I would race ie try to chase people down etc, this is not the case in road running I will never be able to chase down the leaders because they are so much better I have to follow the watch or people I know are consistently hitting say 35 minutes and try to hold them.
3) Tempo run on Tuesday, I don’t think I will ever do a Tempo the week of a race again, I think I would have been better off doing a track workout maybe some 400’s to get my legs used to moving faster, I have done this in the past and it worked so I think I will stick to that.
4) It was my first 10k maybe I was nervous about ‘blowing up’ so I held back (actually I know I held back, usually after a hard race I have a cough or burning lung sensation I did not have any of this afterwords). I think for my next race (Sping Forward 5k, April 2) I will push the envelope.
Positives:
1) It can only get better.
2) Lance Armstrong sucks hard at all his pre-reason races then drops the hammer come July I will look at this as my pre-season race circuit, as long as I am picking it up come July-August I will be happy.
3) I got some points for the Timex Road series (1st in age group)
4) This pissed me off and I will never run this slow again
