This Sunday, I was doing the first race of my “rest of 2009” campaign. It was a 10k type of race around a lake in Bad Segeberg, a beautiful off-road race 20 minutes from where I live:
In the two weeks after my long vacation/break, I just managed to get back to regular running. My fitness had gone quite a lot during the vacation, so I was happy to manage a one hour run in my training without too many issues. Four or five relatively short runs per week, some cycling – that was all that was possible. Certainly no speed work, but hopefully I’ll be able to do that now. But back to the race …
The official distance of the race was 9.5k, but I was looking through last year’s results and the times seemed to be really good – so I was assuming that the race was short. I hadn’t run there before, but I spoke with some friends that were there in the previous years and their guess was just under 9k. I didn’t go with any specific time goal into the race as I didn’t know where I was. I just wanted to run a nice hard race and maybe come in under 40 minutes (more because of the nice round number rather than a specific pace goal).
When I got to the race site, I immediately ran into some friends I hadn’t seen since my last race (Reinfeld Swim/Run). Sure feels good to catch up to what’s going on, talking plans for the next season and exchanging some trash talk. After collecting my race number I went for an easy warmup – just looking at the first (and last) k of the race course. After a little section on roads through town down to the lake the rest of the course was on a nice little path around the lake. As it was “around the lake” I assumed there wouldn’t be too many hills, but some ups and downs were to be expected …
The race
When the gun went off, I settled into a pretty fast clip. I usually don’t start at the very front but maybe a quarter back. So in the first few ks I was overtaking quite a few people that didn’t really belong to the front of the race. After about the first k I had a few people around me that were about my level (well, my usual level when I’m a bit more fit) so I was quite happy with were I was. First “official” 3k were under 12 minutes (short!) and my HR was around 160 – right were I wanted to be.
But alas, I had started a bit too fast. At about five k there were some short, steep uphill sections and I pretty much fell apart – even walking for a short stretch at one of the steeper hills. I still managed to keep my HR at the same level, but my pace dropped to around 4:30/k pace (k’s as posted, again short). Some people started to overtake me, and there was nothing I could do. I managed to keep my HR up, but my pace didn’t get any faster. At the end I was pretty spent and finished in 40:22.
Analysis
So, what do I make of this? Obviously, I’m a little bit “out of form”, but that’s not unexpected (but still a bit sobering). Also, as I haven’t been racing shorter races for quite a while, I have to do a bit of relearning on how to properly pace such a distance and I also need to do some faster training to be able to properly race such a distance. The fact that I could hold my HR was a good sign that I could focus for the race distance. I just need to get better at running fast ..
Converting my time back to the “guesstimated” 9k distance, I’m right at 4:30/k pace. I was hoping that I’d be able to run at that pace in two week’s half-marathon – I think that will be tricky. (I was hoping to run better than my course record at the race which is a 1:38 – around 4:40min/k.) For now, there is nothing else for me to do than to continue training as planned and see how much I manage to get back in the next two weeks. After all, I’ve just started training again … and I still enjoy that a lot!
It’ll be interesting to see how soon my training is going to show results …
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