Start time: 01/08/06, 9:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 6 miles
Average pace: 9:33min/mile
I met up with Dave, Dennis, Cal, Rachel, and Betty to run this morning. I’d done speed training with all of them but Betty, so I knew that this was a group of speed demons and that I’d be probably pushed a little bit beyond my comfort level. Ho ho ho. Understatement of the century. Yep, they’re fast all right. We took off pretty quickly and Rachel & Cal were quickly in the lead. Looking at my watch I kept watching the mile splits go by… 9:45… 9:32… 9:18… I finally slowed down a little bit and pulled off my workout pants (I had shorts underneath, don’t get too excited/horrified) because it was definitely a warm day. I spent the rest of the time trying to make up what I’d lost, though, to catch everyone else. Mile 5 was a 9:07 so I certainly put in the old college try to do so! Dave slowed down for the last half mile because he said he had a stitch in his side. I don’t know if it was true or not but I’m not complaining regardless.
I was both happy and frustrated with my finishing time (57:19). On the plus side, my old speed training pace was a 9:30 so it felt nice to have my average be pretty close to that without getting a quarter mile walk between each full mile. On the minus side… I can’t help but look at some of my previous times and feel a little discouraged. My Capitol Hill Classic 10K finishing time was a 58:06 and that was with an additional .2 miles, and doing it all at a 4:1 run:walk, no less. (And my last 5K, which was admittedly just half the distance, was at an 8:31min/mile.)
If there was ever a huge flashing neon sign that I have picked up some extra pounds the past three months, that was it. Hi, my name is FAT. Time to start really watching what I’m eating and try and shed the layer of blubber that reappeared when I wasn’t paying attention. (I exaggerate a bit, but not much.)
EDIT: Oh yeah. Left foot fell asleep again; it did so back on November 16th, which was the first time I’d had that since 2002. *sigh* I’m going to have to start tagging those entries so I can see if this is going to be a regular thing that I need to look into again, or what.
Running is not an exact science, so don’t beat yourself over your previous times. By no means don’t forget them, but as you know, there are many other factors with running that can cause the differnce in times when, you think you should be running faster (or as fast)!
The biggest thing that I see is that you are comparing a race time to a training run time and those are very hard to compare. Mentally, you approach them different, this is where psychologically you can will yourself to a better performance. Consider the math, given your 6 mile pace an extra 0.2 miles would have taken you another 1:55, given a training time of 6.2 miles 58:14 which is only a 1:08 over your actually race time! That is only a 2% increase over your race time… which since you have been on auto pilot on running and have increased your intake of carbohydrates (from your post) I’d say that’s not too shabby.