October 2, 2016
After this mornings race I couldn’t wait for my recovery 10k. As I mentioned in a post earlier in the week a recovery run is using muscles that are fatigued from a previous hard workout. This means the recovery allows you to ‘smell the roses’ so to speak and also is doing you some serious good. Too good to miss really.
At the race earlier in the day I was speaking to a running hero of mine Chris Maher. Chris has a marathon best of 2:34 at 38 and was still running sub 2:40 marathon times well into his forties. When I was first starting taking running seriously in 2008, pre my first Comrades campaign, Chris would regularly kick my butt on the shorter distances. He still loves his racing as much today as in his prime , just now his competition is women and younger kids, as well as runners of his vintage. (albeit a good standard as Chris still ran a 3:03 marathon recently in his sixties) He gets the same thrill of the chase as I or any runner does when they are tested by competition and their own goals.
In 2013 I thought I had peaked and after winning the Bunbury Marathon in that year (my one and only marathon victory) I was ready to step up for a sub 2:40 marathon assault. This ended in a couple of near misses, 2:41.58 and 2:41.14, but ultimately I lost my love of racing and running in general as I failed on 3 or 4 more occasions to go sub 2:40. I wrote of 2014 as a bad year after such a good previous year. In 2015 Raf from the Running Centre took me under his wing and although i never broke the 2:40 he steered me to a new way of training which I have continued to use and has started to reap rewards.
So 2016 has seen me break my 5k, 10k and half pub’s. All times I thought beyond me. How long can this continue ? Who knows but I’m enjoying the challenge and like Chris love the competition and if I can keep at the front of the pack for a year or two more so be it, but when I eventually return to the pack look out because I’ll be coming for you….
Well it seems distance really is the key to improvement. With a month of twice a day running in my legs and after 119k pre-race kilometres for the week I managed to run a 20 second 10k pb for a first place finish at the WAMC Peninsula run this morning. I have been making a bit of effort reducing the sugar intake and my diet on the whole has always been pretty good, so it must be distance. Maybe you can add in the weight reduction which comes with the extra distance. I’m probably 2-3kg lighter than normal which will also be a bonus.
The proof will be in the pudding so to speak as I have 4 more races over the next 5 weeks. I did promise myself a week off next week but the Fremantle half marathon is one of my favourites and not to be missed. Can I push myself in each race or do I treat one as an indicator race and set a slower than race pace goal with the Masters Marathon coming up. Unfortunately I’ve never been able to enter a race and not give 100%+ , put a race number on and it’s on for young and old…
So lesson learnt from today. You don’t have to taper too much for a 10k, although I did run only once yesterday. Discussing the run with Mike and Jon on the cool down we were off the opinion you can just about get away with a 10k if you are in reasonable shape. Jon ran his 3 year 10k pb (it was his first for 3 years!) and he made a big effort not to walk. He has started a run-walk strategy lately in the half and full marathon (not sure if these are planned beforehand!) and he was happy enough to avoid this and run a 38:45. Mike had a disappointing run and this was pointed out a few times by Jon on the cool down, runners can be cruel sometime. he’ll be back next week for the half. Racing is a must if you want to challenge yourself to improve, nothing makes you run harder than competition.
So lets look at the race with the help of my Strava splits. Because this was a 5k and a 10k race at the start you had no idea who was in which race. At around 2k the 5k and 10k course separate. So I was running in the top 3 at 5k pace initially and then when the lead runner broke of for the 5k course it was left to me and one other runner to take up the mantle. We had a good race to about the halfway point and he certainly pushed me faster than I was comfortable with but I figured worse case I’d blow up and still podium so went ‘all in’. This proved the right choice as at 5k he dropped off and I was left alone to ‘hang on’ for a victory. The pb was a surprise , and a very pleasant one, as the course is not really pb friendly. There’s a small hill , a bridge and the wind was a challenge.
Looking at the splits I did slow down in the last 3k but in my defence there was a head wind and I was ‘goosed’. Maybe there’s more in the tank, we’ll see. For the moment I’m enjoying the feeling of a good pb as I really felt these times were beyond me. Right, lets get ready for Fremantle half next week, I shouldn’t run this evening but funnier things have happened and if I got a text from Mark again who knows….
