Coming off a 1 week break to deal with overtraining problems, and having only been back to it for 2
days, I was going to skip this race. But I got up this morning, observed the perfect weather outside
(conditions about 45 degrees f, not too windy) and thought to myself -- "if I ran today, this really
will be my day". Could just sense that it was going to be good. I'd already registered, and my
fiancee was in it, so I was going anyway. So I put on my race clothes and headed out.
One of the guys from my racing team who's reasonably well matched with me was there. This guy's one
of the "older and wiser" types of runners. Had the most consistent splits in the tempo run we did 9
days ago (+- 1 sec).
Background on this -- October 26, I'd run a 5 miler in 32:12, splits 6:15,6:31,
6:34,6:42. So I badly wanted negative splits today. The plan was to match the projected time from
the 5 miler in the first split and do 6:20 for the first
mile.
So went out very slowly, held myself back. Every man and his dog, it seemed, raced ahead of me in
the first mile, though I overtook some in the second half of the first mile. I just ignored the
noise and focused on maintaining an easy pace. Breathing rhythm 3-3-2. A bit like breathing every 6
steps except you inhale on alternate foot landings and it has a nice 4/4 rhythm. The first mile had
a tough hill on it, so I ran it carefully. The guy from my running club joined me, and we ran
together to the first mile marker.
First split: 6:20. I was feeling happy, almost like I'd won the race already. It really was my day.
Kept the same pace/effort. My teammate and I continued to run together, sometimes swapping places. I
knew I didn't want to get too far out from him, so if I was ahead, I'd make sure he wasn't too far
behind. Greated Global near the end of mile 2.
Second split: 5:57. That was a tad fast -- I was starting to wonder if I'd get those negative
splits. But I'd done that mile on the easy 3-3-2 breathing pattern, and was still feeling very good.
So mile 3 began. This is where I wanted to make my "move". Mile 3 contained 3 hills, none of them
are enormous hills, but it's the toughest part of the course. I switched to 2-2 gear, and pushed
hard, overtaking a lot of runners, especially up the hills. My teammate just took off at an
incredible speed, I didn't try to match it and let him go.
Third split: 6:01. Slower than the second split, but considering the hills, this was by a long way
the strongest of my three splits. Mile 4 was a long downhill. The plan: to hold myself together and
finish. The downhill was on my side, I maybe made up a couple of places. There were a couple of
runners who'd saved their big move for mile 4, and ran past me, but there were a few who were spent.
A club member helped me near the finish by yelling some encouragement (I hope that doesn't count as
"assistance".)
Last split: 6:11. Total time: 24:30. Half splits: 12:17/12:12 = 5 seconds negative. Average pace:
6:07.5 compared to 6:26 for the 5 miler. 4 mile PR and best race this year.
Reflections:
(1) The slow first mile appears to have helped, even in a fairly short race.
(2) I think this decisvely proves that people like Bob Grumbine and Doug Freese who argued that
complete rest before a race works well were right. I could actually feel this morning that I was
ready to run fast, there's no doubt that the rest had a major role in this race. No speed work
for 9 days, and the last week consisted of 2 easy runs the two days before the race, and some
cross training on the elliptical. The biggest single training event in the month between the two
events was the resting.
Cheers and thanks for reading,
--
Donovan Rebbechi pegasus.rutgers.edu~elflordOpen ↗