Thanks Dale, for your input and vote of confidence
I actually did run the entire course beforehand but didn’t wear my Garmin. To be honest I don’t think the marker being misplaced had that much to do with my falling short. I just thought it might make for a more interesting story. If it had been in the right place I would have ended up with a slower 3-mile split and a faster split for the last 1.07 . It wasn’t going to change the amount of time it took me to get home from the 2-mile mark. What might have made a difference would have been if the guys I was chasing ran faster. When I was gaining on them it gave me distorted sense of how fast I was going. I knew I was on pace at 2 miles and thought if I was closing so much ground that I must have sped up. Even when you slow down by a couple seconds it feels like you are going really fast when you are tired and in the last mile. There’s no guarantee I could have squeezed out another 7 seconds anyway. I was pushing pretty hard.
Once you sharpen up a bit with some faster stuff and remember how much 5K' hurt, you will get that sub-19
That might help but I have no immediate plans to change my training, although I admit that the idea of trying a few sessions of 200's-400's sounds interesting. I'll probably continue to stick with the threshold stuff. Maybe doing a few more 5k's will toughen me for the more intense pain that comes at higher speeds. Generally I'm better at handling moderate pain for a longer time than the real bad stuff for shorter duration. My most important goal this year is to run well at Chicago Marathon in October.
When is the next attempt?
Possibly this Sunday. I’m in crazed racer mode again
. I have a choice between 5k/10k and both courses are flat, certified. Originally I planned on the 10, but have started to consider the 5. I probably won’t make up my mind until Saturday night. There's a more important one coming up April 20, but it's not on an especially fast course.
How about you? I assume you are still on for Boston. If so, how do you feel about your chances of running the kind of race that you want to?
