4 miles, same course as three weeks ago (http://tinyurl.com/zeqw6).
Since then, 2 weeks of decent 50+ mile base training, then this week
I've had limited running, with the sort of tightness in my upper right
leg (piriformis especially) which has preceded injury in the past.
I had intended a slight cutback this week anyhow but took two days off
altogether and ran less the others. Did some self-massage and received
some therapist-massage. Need to get more diligent with the
self-massage, and add some sort of piriformis stretch to my routine,
now that I'm doing more faster running - I've been folding more quicker
stuff in already, and my 24 week schedule says after one more week of
base we begin reps, which also includes a smaller amount of
unstructured intervals and some tempo stuff.
So after 30 minutes of easy running, five or six strides, and a little
bit of very gentle stretching once warmed up, I felt hopefully loose
enough to give it my all without straining something. I had worn pants
over tights on the train ride up to Central Park and for my warmup.
Never ordinarily do this but figured I'd better try it to keep the legs
warm and loose. I think it helped. I removed the pants for the race,
and changed into IMO the prettiest pair of shoes worn by a male racer
today: http://www.holabirdsports.com/cgi-bin/product?product=042275
Lined up in much better position than the last time. There are banners
labelled 5, 6, 7 ... up to 11, for your predicted mile/min pace. The
vast majority line up further forward than they really run. I lined up
right at 6, figuring to average about 6:30. Reckoned this was a bit
further back than most 26:00 aspirants but as it turned out there were
a lot more guys (this race has separate heats for men and women)
between that 6 banner and the starting line than I realized, about 30
seconds worth once the gun fired. This worked out OK: many in front of
me were slower, but it just wasn't so many hundreds as last time and
didn't slow me down as much. I wasn't too worried about gun time -
certainly I don't compete for an AG place in these big races, placing
118th in M3039 today.
At the starting line there were four mats, one after the next. I
started my watch at the first, unsure which one concealed the "start"
sensors. Must've been a later mat since my official net time was 5"
faster than my watch. So my first mile split - 6:49 by my watch -
alarmed me a bit more than it might have. I picked it up a bit.
Then at the second mile I was a little alarmed again, now at having
made up nearly all the time I lost (vs. 26' pace) on the first mile.
Too fast? Maybe not: I was more aware this time that what came up in
the first mile went back down in the second.
Plotting the course just now (http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=38280)
helped clarify that the third mile doesn't just seem tougher because
it's the third mile, but also because it's more uphill than down. And
that third mile *was* tough once again, but I was relieved to finish it
under 6:30. I was only a few seconds off 26' pace, by my watch, at
this point.
Found I didn't really have another gear for the first half of mile 4,
but was able to take advantage of the negative slope of the latter half
and surpass my goal handily. Less of a kick left at the end but
neither did I die in the final mile. In fact I was a second faster in
this mile than last race - which also means slower vs. my overall pace
this time, but plenty good enough.
Here's the splits and results, three weeks ago vs. today.
05 Feb: 6:54 - 6:31 - 6:37 - 6:15 = 26:17, 66.8% WAVA
25 Feb: 6:44 - 6:18 - 6:27 - 6:14 = 25:43, 68.3% WAVA
Of course that represents a new 4M PR, and also a new WAVA high water
mark. I'm happy with that.