At the end of a tough enough week training relative to the amount of training I've been doing recently the last thing you want to be doing is running in the National 10K championships aka the Great Ireland Run but I was so it was a case of getting on with it as best we could.
Sunday morning was damp and breezy, very breezy in fact when I headed out around 9am for a couple of easy miles as suggested by Gary on Friday night. The purpose of this was to prepare the body for running later on so the race did not come as a complete shock to the system. Even though this was only to loosen the legs and at an easy pace the legs were definitely not feeling anyway fresh and my left calf was still feeling a bit tight.
Fast forward a few hours and we were in the Park, brief warm up and I took my place at the back of the pen for AAI athletes ready for the off. The wind was gale force and the consensus seemed to be that it would be difficult to run any sort of PB time.
10.03K in 46:48
Avg Pace: 7:31 per mile
Avg HR: 146
KM Splits (4:31, 4:31, 4:40, 4:35, 4:30, 4:44, 4:42, 4:55, 5:06, 4:28, :07)
Started off the race with the aim of going no faster than 4:30 pace for the first few K and see what happened then. Kept it nice and steady up chesterfield avenue and up to the 1K point. Felt controlled but not easy. As we headed down the north road the wind seemed to be helping slightly and again kept the effort steady. Got passed along here by one of the telletubbies which was worrying but he ground to a halt further up the road.
Got through 2K on target but wasn't feeling easy and knew we would be turning shortly onto a fast part of the course but which was directly into the wind today. From 3K - 5K should have been easy and a chance to make some time with a big downhill but it was really exposed and a fight with the wind just to hang onto planned pace.
Just after 5K the first challenge came in the form of military hill followed shortly by the S bends. A few seconds but enough to put any thoughts of a PB out of my head were lost at this stage as I only really had one effort level to resort to. Sometimes if your feeling good or fresh you can kick on or dig in but not today.
At this point it was just a case of seeing the race out. Slowed a bit further through 8 & 9K both of which had further hills. Coming up to 9K I met someone I knew and had a chat for a few hundred metres before picking it up a bit for the last few hundred metres.
Summary: Relative to some of my recent races I should be able to run 44:xx for a 10K at the moment so probably about 2 minutes off where I should be on a calm day and favourable course. Not too disappointed with the performance on tired legs and the fall off in the 2nd half is not huge for that course.
Hopefully a couple more weeks good training and a bit of a taper will leave me fresher for the Boyne 10K. Surely we're due a calm day as well or maybe thats too much to ask.
No comments:
Post a Comment