Today was the We Love Manchester 10k, which conveniently started and finished at the Regional Athletics Track, Sportcity where the Salford Harriers meet for track sessions every Tuesday; pretty much as close to home as it's possible to be. Not quite as close as the Bupa Great Manchester Run in May but only a convenient two mile warm up from my house anyway! I had very deliberately denied myself the opportunity for any pre-race excuses in my last post (at least not without being a spectacular hypocrite!) as well as publicly declaring my intention to bring in my first sub 40 minute 10k and so I was feeling the pressure of expectation without the release valve of 'however'. I'm going to be true to my last mild rant though and tell it like it is without falling back on any buffers of 'ifs' and 'buts'.
Physically, I was in good form. Two days rest after my last race (a 20 minute 5k on Thursday) with no running (a bit of swimming and some yoga but no more than that) I felt fairly rested; loose legs, no tightness, no niggles. I've been eating very well all week (I do anyway but have been especially careful this week), ensuring the correct balance of carbs to fats to proteins. I've never been more aware of what I'm eating since I started running and I've been on a restricted (veggie/vegan) diet since I was 10! True, I'd not slept that much in the last few nights but if body wakes up after 4 hours, I assume body has had what it needs. I didn't feel tired anyway. A good breakfast, a solid warm up, every box was ticked. Physically. BUT I just wasn't 'feeling' it. I don't know if it was self-doubt, accumulated mental fatigue, the grey weather... I just didn't feel like racing.
The last issue of Runner's World had a really interesting article that I identified with totally, discussing the relationship between physical preparation (the machine) and that extra mental edge that allows you to push the machine just a touch further, the animal instinct (the beast) that pops up on race day and shaves those last few seconds off. I've had it, I'm sure most runners have, when something just clicks inside and the joy of the race takes over, a hot, hungry impulse that drives out of the chest and spurs the legs on with some kind of extra fight/flight/adrenaline cocktail. Today, my machine was well oiled, fully polished and purring like a happy kitty. Unfortunately, my beast was slumped in a corner, occasionally deigning to growl a bit but not in the mood to roar.
As you are probably gathering, the upshot of all these metaphors is that I did not achieve my sub 40 10k. I gave it a bloody good go though and honestly did run as fast and hard as I could for the duration of the course. The first mile or so of any race is always a bottleneck; it takes time for runners to settle into pace and find their 'place' in the stream so I always try and write that off as a warm up and pick the pace up later to compensate. This is not unexpected. My first mile came in just over 7 minutes. Not fast enough for sub 40 but not slow enough to write off the effort just yet. The next 6 miles I was hovering around 6 minutes 20. I had an idea I needed to be running 6 minutes 30 to break 40 but to be fair I hadn't worked it out explicitly. I was pretty hopeful anyway that ten seconds on each mile would more than account for the slow start, I felt strong and whilst it was hard work (not a comfortable marathon plod!) I was feeling increasingly optimistic that I might just do it. The beast flickered an eyelid. As we came back round to the stadium, I heard a marshal tell one runner that we were at 29 minutes on the gun time. 'Surely not!?' I thought to myself 'have I really got this in the bag!?' The Garmin beeped what I assumed was mile 6. 'Get IN!' I internally cheered until I looked at the screen. Mile 5. Ah. That makes more sense. At this little update, the beast licked it's bum a bit and curled back up in the corner, completely draining my legs of all animal instinct and reminding the machine that it had been taking a bit of a pounding for the last half hour. Of course I kept going but this little mental let down was noticeable and the last mile did not fly by as smoothly as I might have liked. I crossed the finish with a gun time of 41.05. Having not been right at the front, my chip time (how long it actually took me to run the distance with out adding on how long it took me to cross the start line in the queue of runners) was 40.30. I was basically 31 seconds off my sub 40 target. Yes, I really would have been happy with 39.59! Hey ho. You win some, you lose some. I won't pretend I wasn't disappointed but I was close enough to not feel completely gutted!
Physically, I was in good form. Two days rest after my last race (a 20 minute 5k on Thursday) with no running (a bit of swimming and some yoga but no more than that) I felt fairly rested; loose legs, no tightness, no niggles. I've been eating very well all week (I do anyway but have been especially careful this week), ensuring the correct balance of carbs to fats to proteins. I've never been more aware of what I'm eating since I started running and I've been on a restricted (veggie/vegan) diet since I was 10! True, I'd not slept that much in the last few nights but if body wakes up after 4 hours, I assume body has had what it needs. I didn't feel tired anyway. A good breakfast, a solid warm up, every box was ticked. Physically. BUT I just wasn't 'feeling' it. I don't know if it was self-doubt, accumulated mental fatigue, the grey weather... I just didn't feel like racing.
The last issue of Runner's World had a really interesting article that I identified with totally, discussing the relationship between physical preparation (the machine) and that extra mental edge that allows you to push the machine just a touch further, the animal instinct (the beast) that pops up on race day and shaves those last few seconds off. I've had it, I'm sure most runners have, when something just clicks inside and the joy of the race takes over, a hot, hungry impulse that drives out of the chest and spurs the legs on with some kind of extra fight/flight/adrenaline cocktail. Today, my machine was well oiled, fully polished and purring like a happy kitty. Unfortunately, my beast was slumped in a corner, occasionally deigning to growl a bit but not in the mood to roar.
As you are probably gathering, the upshot of all these metaphors is that I did not achieve my sub 40 10k. I gave it a bloody good go though and honestly did run as fast and hard as I could for the duration of the course. The first mile or so of any race is always a bottleneck; it takes time for runners to settle into pace and find their 'place' in the stream so I always try and write that off as a warm up and pick the pace up later to compensate. This is not unexpected. My first mile came in just over 7 minutes. Not fast enough for sub 40 but not slow enough to write off the effort just yet. The next 6 miles I was hovering around 6 minutes 20. I had an idea I needed to be running 6 minutes 30 to break 40 but to be fair I hadn't worked it out explicitly. I was pretty hopeful anyway that ten seconds on each mile would more than account for the slow start, I felt strong and whilst it was hard work (not a comfortable marathon plod!) I was feeling increasingly optimistic that I might just do it. The beast flickered an eyelid. As we came back round to the stadium, I heard a marshal tell one runner that we were at 29 minutes on the gun time. 'Surely not!?' I thought to myself 'have I really got this in the bag!?' The Garmin beeped what I assumed was mile 6. 'Get IN!' I internally cheered until I looked at the screen. Mile 5. Ah. That makes more sense. At this little update, the beast licked it's bum a bit and curled back up in the corner, completely draining my legs of all animal instinct and reminding the machine that it had been taking a bit of a pounding for the last half hour. Of course I kept going but this little mental let down was noticeable and the last mile did not fly by as smoothly as I might have liked. I crossed the finish with a gun time of 41.05. Having not been right at the front, my chip time (how long it actually took me to run the distance with out adding on how long it took me to cross the start line in the queue of runners) was 40.30. I was basically 31 seconds off my sub 40 target. Yes, I really would have been happy with 39.59! Hey ho. You win some, you lose some. I won't pretend I wasn't disappointed but I was close enough to not feel completely gutted!
The Dirt! Race Statistics and Placing Info
After the race I hung about a bit and bumped into various running friends/acquaintances, not one of whom had achieved a PB and many of whom were (funnily enough) about 30/40 seconds off their target!. I then caught up with Mark and Jen (whom you may recognise from other recent races, they are rapidly becoming my go-to partners in running crime!) and moaned a bit about failing to get sub 40 before feeling like a bit of an arse since neither of them run at quite the same pace as me anyway and were likely stood there thinking that they'd not be complaining with that! | 
Mark, me and Jenny after the race!
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It was at this point I think that Mark pointed out that it was still a PB for me, even if I hadn't quite met my sub 40 goal. I completed my last 10k in May (Manchester Great Run) in 41.20. I hadn't even realised it was a PB. So what's happened since a year or so ago, when I was on cloud nine for days having run my first 10k in a little over 45 minutes? Success is clearly rather subjective.
I still have a crack at sub 40 in an officially timed event in September at the Salford City 10k so I'm now going to accept this as a good result (I was still in the top ten of female finishers in 7th place) and try and be a bit kinder to my beast for a couple of weeks. I think it's fair to say I may have sabotaged my own mojo over the last few weeks by simply running too much. I've never found it easy to recognise 'enough' and am very much an 'all or nothing' person. My approach to running is much like my approach to say beer, or marzipan it seems. I have long stated the fact that here is no such thing as 'enough' marzipan. There's not enough marzipan and then there's 'blerguh, oh my, too much marzipan'. I can't think of an area in life where I find it easy to go 'ah. there's the sweet spot'. Today, I think I have learned that with running, I am potentially approaching the line I always seem to notice in retrospect. This is great news as it means I've spotted it coming for once. I'm off 'dahn sahf' for a week tomorrow morning as I visit family in and around London. There's some lovely trail routes out around the Thames Estuary that I have often walked but never considered running and so I am really looking forward to exploring some of these. I am planning to ditch the pacing facility of Mr Garmino and just run for fun. A little bit. Not every day. Maybe I'll even go for... a.. w a l k. Reset, reflect, review and rest. I shall then look forward to revising my training plan for the September race and actually sticking to it. That is sticking to just the training plan and not doing any more than that. Who knows, maybe I will see the summer out with that sub 40 10k in the bag and maybe I won't but if I can wake that little beastie up after a probably much needed nap and start the autumn season feeling like I want to train for the 2015 London Marathon then that will be the best possible outcome!
I still have a crack at sub 40 in an officially timed event in September at the Salford City 10k so I'm now going to accept this as a good result (I was still in the top ten of female finishers in 7th place) and try and be a bit kinder to my beast for a couple of weeks. I think it's fair to say I may have sabotaged my own mojo over the last few weeks by simply running too much. I've never found it easy to recognise 'enough' and am very much an 'all or nothing' person. My approach to running is much like my approach to say beer, or marzipan it seems. I have long stated the fact that here is no such thing as 'enough' marzipan. There's not enough marzipan and then there's 'blerguh, oh my, too much marzipan'. I can't think of an area in life where I find it easy to go 'ah. there's the sweet spot'. Today, I think I have learned that with running, I am potentially approaching the line I always seem to notice in retrospect. This is great news as it means I've spotted it coming for once. I'm off 'dahn sahf' for a week tomorrow morning as I visit family in and around London. There's some lovely trail routes out around the Thames Estuary that I have often walked but never considered running and so I am really looking forward to exploring some of these. I am planning to ditch the pacing facility of Mr Garmino and just run for fun. A little bit. Not every day. Maybe I'll even go for... a.. w a l k. Reset, reflect, review and rest. I shall then look forward to revising my training plan for the September race and actually sticking to it. That is sticking to just the training plan and not doing any more than that. Who knows, maybe I will see the summer out with that sub 40 10k in the bag and maybe I won't but if I can wake that little beastie up after a probably much needed nap and start the autumn season feeling like I want to train for the 2015 London Marathon then that will be the best possible outcome!
Mmmmm... Balls...
| So, if I slap myself up-side the whinge gland and actually look at what I've achieved then I have run a good race today and shaved 50 seconds of my best 10k time! I wasn't a total grump anyway, I also enjoyed the post-race event, devouring a few squashed home-made Mocha Recovery Balls that I'd managed to cram in a pocket and chatting to friends before exploiting the free post race massage! I'm now going to take a well-earned break before re-focusing on my next race in Septemb... Ah. I am now going to have fun and not even think about a finishing time next Sunday in the Newham Anniversary Run before I take a well-earned break and re-focus on my next race in September! Now where are those choccy balls? |
