It’s behind me now, the 15K I finished along with about 3200 other runners Sunday morning. Over an hour before, a 4-miler was held also, and I got to stand on the course and cheer on the early runners. It’s a win/win for everybody, and I’ll take any good karma I can get, especially before a race. And it’s a pretty good way to kill some time before you have to go on…
So my strategy was to run the same pace I ran in a 10-miler three weeks ago, over a shorter distance. How hard is that? I found out soon enough. After a Saturday of torrential rain and high winds, the temperature dropped 30 degrees, while we kept some of those nasty winds. So another wintertime race in clear, cold, blustery weather. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to move on to races that do not include ice on the course and getting thrown around while mid-air.
The Central Park hills I know so well kicked my ass, so keeping the pace was a lot harder than I expected. And when people start passing you in the last three miles, you know you’re slowing down. But I didn’t slow down too much. I generally kept the pace, and tried to do the math, you know, distance remaining, pace per mile, etc., and failed miserably at that. I wanted to beat my previous 15K time of 1:06:50, and I just couldn’t get the arithmetic going right in the brain. Someday I’ll write about ‘Runner’s Brain’ (or lack thereof), the relationship between increased running distance and decreased ability to compute simple, 3rd grade math formulas.
Anyway, I reached the finish line at 1:03:33. Not as fast a pace as three weeks ago in the 10-miler (any faster would’ve made the pace barfworthy)… but it’s the PR I’d hoped for. And happily, a nice improvement over the previous record. It helps to not run in many 15K races anyway, but I’ve averaged one every year for the last ten years, so I’ll take what I can get. And I’ve been doing tempo runs at 6:48 m/m for a while now, I guess training helps after all. I’ll put a little sticky note reminder about that on the brain hard drive the next time I start to whine about tempo/interval runs…
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Nice PR!! Congrats!! Yes, those tempo runs really make a difference. Sometimes I find myself panting out the mantra "this. is. going. to. help." as I wheel myself around the track doing 800's. Makes me tired just thinking about it. I know what you mean about the 3rd grade math and, ahem, that's what Race Monkey is for, my friend.
Post a Comment