This was a pretty good race considering that I trained hard through it, and did the longest bike ride of my life just 6 days before. However, knowing I had tired legs, I wasn’t sure if I could run the pace my coach told me to run. I was told to run 5:40’s, which I thought was unrealistic as I had only been doing aerobic running and hadn’t run faster than a 6:15 mile in training! I am use to race pace efforts in training that indicate potential race times.
Overall, my pacing was a bit uneven. I went out in only a 5:46 as I was worried about going out too hard as I did in the Pride Run at the end of June. However, when I saw 5:46, I was like crap, this is too slow! I then dropped a 5:30, which was admittedly a bit too fast. When I saw my second mile split, I thought that I should ease up a bit, and I also started feeling pretty dead legged at 2.5 miles. As a result, I only ran 5:55 for the 3rd mile, so I definitely eased up too much. Then on the 4th mile which has a pretty decent sized hill (cat hill) I only ran 6:00. However, the last mile, I did manage to pull it back together, and ran a 5:40. Overall, I was really worried I couldn't actually run 5:40 pace and wasted way too much mental energy questioning it and second guessing my fitness. In the end I averaged 5:47 pace, so I actually wasn’t that far off considering it was raining, windy, and not a flat course. I also think if I ran more even splits that I probably would've been a lot closer to 5:40’s. I am learning that I need to trust my coach and realize that he knows what I can do! This 5 mile race is still a huge improvement over a month ago (1:11 faster). My main take away from this race is that I need to stop thinking so much and just run hard!
“My main take away from this race is that I need to stop thinking so much and just run hard!”