Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run Race Report

I think the biggest thing I learned yesterday is that when you take your watch out of the equation, you evaluate a race very differently.  I had a rough time in the last few miles and when I finished I was pretty angry with myself, despite the fact that I ended up with a pretty significant PR.

The first few miles were relatively uneventful.  The course was pretty crowded, so I tried to keep a steady pace and move around people without expending too much energy.  I saw a number of great CAR spectators near the start and then my mother was out on Memorial Bridge and again near mile 4.  I felt good in the early miles, but since I hadn't raced in months, I had no idea how it would go later on.

Photo by Cheryl

When I hit mile 5 I was happy to be halfway, but also starting to realize that the second half was going to be pretty painful.  I knew there was water somewhere around mile 6, so when I got past five and a half miles I took my Clif shot (chocolate cherry - double caffeine!).  I felt an immediate boost and was able to drop the pace a bit as I headed out onto Hains Point.  My goal had been to treat those last four miles as a tempo run and incrementally drop the pace/increase my effort each mile.  I felt like I was right on track on the way out to the end (miles 6, 7), cruising along comfortably and passing a number of people without too much difficulty.

Unfortunately, when I reached the end and turned around to head back towards the finish, I could feel my energy start to lag.  This was eerily similar to what has happened in all three of the tempos I have run since returning to the track.  In those workouts, I felt strong for the first mile and a half to two miles and fell apart in the last mile (in two cases I was planning on four miles and stopped at 5k).  The worst part about feeling myself slowing a bit was not actually that I was slowing, but that my mind immediately recalled those workouts and I let it get to my head.  As people I had passed started going past me, the negative talk in my head just got worse. Instead of trying to push past it, I held back, afraid that I would completely fall apart. Unlike with those workouts, there was no option to stop early. I was afraid to force myself to pick it up when I saw the 8 mile marker and instead waited until I had completed mile 9.

Fortunately I was able to rally and get going again in the last mile and tried to pick people off as I ran up the slight hill that was about a quarter mile from the finish.  Despite the fact that I had not looked at my watch the whole time, I had a general idea of how I would finish because I had a hard time ignoring the clocks posted at every mile marker and I had a very rough idea of the time on the clock when I crossed the start line. So I thought I was actually probably going to be pretty close to the PR I ran at Army in the fall, especially if I did a decent job in the last mile.  Yet even though I knew this, I crossed the finish line feeling disappointed and angry.

After walking a bit down the chute, I finally changed the screen on my Garmin to see my time and was surprised to see that I hadn't squeaked under my old PR, but actually been almost 90 seconds faster.  This should have immediately made me feel much better about the race, but oddly, it didn't. I think I was so focused on ignoring my pace that I could only tie my evaluation of the race to my feelings about how it felt to run. I just didn't feel like I had run a smart race and that bothered me.

For the sake of comparison, here are my splits from the Army 10 miler (my old PR) vs. yesterday's race:

When I ran Army I had my Garmin set on autolap, which is why I ended up with 1:24 of extra time. I hit lap myself for Cherry Blossom, so even though my Garmin distance was a bit long (10.12 miles), the splits are accurate for each mile. If I redistribute the extra time from Army over 10 miles (to make the math easier I just did 8 seconds per mile), the comparison is a bit more relevant.

Looking at this adjusted split comparison is what finally kicked me out of my funk and made me feel a whole lot better about this race.  Yes, I didn't do a great job of picking up the pace over the course of the run (I did a better job in October), but my splits for eight of ten miles were faster yesterday.  And I was relatively consistent overall, the range isn't that large.

It feels good to know that even on what I considered to be not enough training this spring, I am still ahead of where I was last fall.  I was worried that the time off after Goofy and subsequent piriformis issues had set me back pretty far.  Fortunately that does not appear to be the case. I said in my goals post that I wanted this race to be an assessment of where I am right now and I think it ended up being a good evaluation of my current fitness level. I'm looking forward to really focusing and working hard in April and then, hopefully, racing a strong half in May.