Thousand Miles to Salamanca

Favorite 20+ 5K (Bun Run Results)

Distance: 2.5 mile warmup, 3.1 mile race
Total: 5.6 miles
5k Time: 20:27

What a day. Background: On Thursday night I attended a lecture type thing with Steve Sisson from Rogue Racing Systems. As I've mentioned before I'm in his PR for the 5K Class. After the last seven weeks of training, he sat us down in a room and gave us a race plan for the 5k. It was brilliant. If I can get a hold of an electronic version, I'll post it.

His strategy was remarkably simple, but one I've never heard before (it's not that I often read race plans). Warm up sufficiently. Do some striders. Do some drills. Then, run your first mile at your goal pace (5k goal time divided by 1 mile), run the second mile at your goal pace and run the last 1.1 mile as fast as you can (incrementally).

Because he knows racing so well, he told us that the excitement of a race often tempts people to go out too fast during the first half-mile. So he stressed and re-stressed sticking to our goal pace as best as we could at the 400m mark. If we were over or under, we adjusted appropriately. Same thing with the 800m mark. It seemed to work.

I was a little fast at the 400m mark: 1:34. Since my goal for the 5k was 20:45, my 400m 5k pace goal was 1:40. My 800m time was 3:30, when it should have been 3:40. I adjusted again. Feeling good, it was tempting to speed up. Especially when I was being passed. Glad I didn't respond. I hit the mile mark at 6:30.

I actually was able to zone out today. Tears were streaming down my face, mainly because of the wind, the sweat and the cool air. But I focused on legs in the distance and zoned. After the loop, I could really start to feel myself getting warmer. I crossed the two-mile mark at 7:00 minutes. Although I didn't know it at the time because I messed up my watch on the last split. I passed the water station, took a small sip (my mouth was completely dry) and poured the rest on my head. I was at the two-mile mark, time to do something.

After getting about a hundred meters into it, I hit the rolling hills (very light). Jumped up in toe-mode and got a great start to the mile. Started all the tactics in the book like picking off people. Then I started doubting myself. Stuff like: "It's not a big deal if I don't PR" and "does it really matter?" and "What if I slow down, who cares?"

But I then focused on landmarks. I'm keeping pace until that sign, then I'm slowing down. Did that and it got me to the bridge. I was ready to slow down, and heard my one fan cheering me on. Thanks, Coach! She got me across the bridge and then I saw Steve. He was where he said he'd be, yelling at us. He yelled "Use your arms." As he did that, I hit my split button (I reset it at mile 2) and forced myself through the finish line.

During the last 3/4 of a mile I had the feeling, the lactic acid feeling. But the amazing thing was that kept me from slowing down was my memory of that feeling. I've felt this before, even worse. It was the exact same feeling I had when I didn't want to line myself up for the third all-out 400m interval a couple weeks ago. Then I thought to myself "I've been here before" and just gutted it up and did it. It paid off. Mile 3: 6:19. My fastest mile of the race.

I've never been more proud of a 5k time over 20 minutes. This one means a lot. It was a race where I was prepared, but more importantly, I was in control. I never had that feeling even on my best days in my old high school cross country world.

posted by Gray @ 8:13 PM