this morning i competed at the philly's fools 10k race in whitby for the second straight year. for nearly a week i've been contemplating whether or not i should do this race, my body telling me to stay home and rest. on a workout last tuesday my legs felt like they were made of cement and i had to force myself through an otherwise easy set of intervals, and i immediately got in touch with my coach afterwards to tell him i was going to take the rest of the week off from training. i took wednesday off work because i felt like ass, i was in no better state on thursday and should have stayed home again but forced myself into the office, barely made it through the day without throwing up all over my desk, and only started to feel better that evening. i didn't show much of an improvement over the weekend and started weighing out the pros and cons of competing in this race. the cons were obvious: if i competed, my in-need-of-a-rest body would take another beating and i'd be off my feet for another week, possibly even more, recovering. some of the pros of competing were substantial and included the fact that i need this race to see where my running is at right now compared to last year. without knowing that it's hard to get a good sense of what sort of year this will be for me. i took it easy on friday and rested as much as i could and did a short 30-minute run on saturday morning. feeling ok but still not 100%, i decided then that i was at least capable of pulling off a 10k race today.
since i had such great luck with it on the morning of my last race, i started today off with an easy 30-minute spin on my bike at home to get the blood flowing and did a full stretch afterwards. sticking with another theme, i showed up on race site way too late and only had 20-minutes to warm-up after i'd registered. i did a few minutes' worth of jogging, did a couple short sprints, and got in a few dynamic stretches before heading to the starting corral. but not feeling completely warmed up and ready was just fine with me. i was confident that i could race here today and get a better time than last year without having to kill myself, so my plan wasn't to go balls out. i wanted to finish this race feeling like i still had lots in me, not like i'd need to be carried away on a stretcher; a modest effort after a modest warm-up was all a part of today's plan. i found a spot a few rows back from the front and found myself next to another absolute endurance athlete, john oh, and together we made our way towards the front of the pack once the race began.
this is a great little out-and-back 2.5k course that winds its way along pedestrian paths along whitby's waterfront. also happening today was a 5k race so as the runners slowly began to thin out, it was me in 2nd spot and another guy ahead of me in first. my new tactic of starting further back in the crowd at the beginning is really working out for me, and as i approached the 1k marker i could vividly remember my race here last year. at this same point where i was feeling solid and steady and fully capable of finishing strong today, last year my heart rate was through the roof and i was having a hard time settling into a pace i could hold for another 9 kilometres. starting a few rows back from the front ensures that i don't go out too hard too soon and throw away a race within the first few hundred metres.
on the first portion of the race we were running up a false flat into a headwind. if my hunch was correct, once i hit the 2.5k turnaround marker my split times would come down substantially, but even at this point in the race i was able to hold my average pace from last year at a heart rate that was low enough that i knew i wasn't going to burn myself out. the guy ahead of me kept creeping further ahead of me and it looked like he had a similar race plan. once i'd hit the first turnaround and starting making my way back, my speed had picked up quite a bit but he was still getting away from me. clearly he was taking advantage of the tailwind and downhill false flat too. knowing that i'd have to give it everything i had to catch up to him, i decided to stick with my own race and take whatever time it was that i was able to get today and let him have the win (because he obviously wanted it more than me!), but it struck me at the 4k marker that maybe the guy ahead of me was competing in the 5k race. he was certainly on pace for a great 5k time, and as i reached my turnaround point and headed out for my second lap, he was nowhere to be found and the lead cyclist was now leading me around the course. sweet!, i thought, i've been in first this whole time and didn't even know it!
my second lap began and i stuck with the same race plan as the first: stay strong in the uphill headwind and pick things up on the way back to the finish. i wanted to finish today's race in a time of 37.30 or less, and as i reached the 7.5k turnaround point and eventually found my tailwind, i looked at my watch and saw that i was going to have to pick things up in order to get it. because i'd conserved loads of energy i was able to finish my last 2 kilometres at a pace of about 3.32/km and crossed the line in 1st place with a time of 37.26. john finished behind me in 2nd place. a 1-2 finish for absolute endurance!
when i got home i immediately compared my time, pace and heart rates from last year. on the exact same course and under virtually identical conditions, here's how the year over year numbers compare:
2009
finish time: 38.27
avg hr: 182
max hr: 190
avg pace: 3.50/km
2010
finish time: 37.26
avg hr: 176
max hr: 187
avg pace: 3.44/km
all of this means that right now i'm running faster with less effort than i was at this point last year, and the even better news is that this result ties my result from the 10k race i did at the provincial duathlon championships in gravenhurst last july, which means that even with the setback of my injury, i'm going to be picking up 2010 right where 2009 left off. which means that i am very, very, VERY excited about what my coach and i have been able to do over the past few months. i felt so great after this race and was feeling psyched with my result because i'm confident that if i'd needed to, i could have shaved some pretty substantial time off of that finish. but i stuck to my race plan and i'm glad i did. this is a race that i probably never should have done because my body is in need of some downtime right now, but finishing so strong at the end of a race is a huge confidence booster and i'm feeling more and more ready for my duathlon season to begin.
