Well, my first race of the 2010 season is officially in the books. Race morning brought us some pretty ideal weather compared to the last few years. No rain and nice temps with little wind, made the race much more enjoyable.
I went out on my "stretch goal" pace of 4:30/km (this would bring me in at 2:15 for the race if I could hold). The first few kms went buy without incident. Its a fairly big race (over 7000 people), so it's a tad crowded, but I positioned my self towards the front with similar paced runners. By 6.5kms I had spotted the 2:15 pace bunny (a runner who wears a hat with bunny ears, marking him as a pacer for a certain time). I figured I would just tuck into the group that was following him. I went through the first 10 km just under pace, and remained with the pace bunny until about 12km. At this point a moved slightly ahead of him, mainly because it was crowded running around him (as it often is - they are popular people for runners who aren't comfortable pacing themselves). For this reason I try and avoid running near pacers for too long.
The next several km's were pretty smooth. I was mostly to myself, and was just holding the pace. In around the 18km mark, I was starting to feel a bit of power loss in the legs. Not surprisingly, this is the point in the course where the hills begin. I knew they were coming, so I tried to push through. I hit the 20km mark still slightly ahead of pace, and was happy with how I felt through this portion of the race.
But I knew the next 7km are the toughest of the race...hills come in all forms here - shorter steeper, longer gradual, its not killer, but late into the race, it will zap you if your not prepared (and I was slightly underprepared for the pace I was running). At 22km's, the 'pace bunny' group went by me. I was never far ahead of them, but it sucked watching as they passed. I tried to go with them up the hill, but the legs started feeling tight, and my range of motion in my stride was decreasing. I decided to manage as best I could, let them go and just make it through the hills on my pace. At 25.5 km's comes the biggest hill. As we headed down the proceeding hill, one spectator referred to it as heading through the valley of death - he's not far off ;-)
Anyways, one foot after the other, and I was in the valley - sometimes going downhill is worse than going up. The legs can take a pounding and my left quad felt like it was being punched with every step down the valley (gotta love it). I then made the long steep climb out of it. Going uphill you use your posterior muscles, so the hamstrings and lower back come into play. My lower pack was slightly tight, but it didn't last too long - soon I was out of the valley...
From here on out, the last 3km of the race are flat to slightly down hill. I pushed onward and was able to only slightly pick it up. My main goal now, was more about not slowing down too much as opposed to running much faster. Next thing I know, I'm rounding the corner to go down the ramp and into the finishing stretch; which for this race is inside of Copps Colosium (kinda cool). I looked up and saw the clock at 2:19 something. I felt pretty good, grabbed my medal and post race food, and met up with a few others I knew running.
My official chip time ended up being 2:18:55. Not too bad considering this past month (sickness) and the training focus (bike) the past several months. Hopefully I can start working in more running to the training - I'm ready to get back to PB form!
Thanks for reading,
Jon
No comments:
Post a Comment