Today I raced the North Shore 10k Turkey Trot in Highland Park. This was my first time participating in this race, and the first time that I have ever run a "turkey trot". Honestly, for as far as I can remember through residency I have always seemed to work on thanksgiving morning making doing any of these races impossible. Also, I have usually taken the October and November time period off from working out leaving me with little motivation to do any sort of running this weekend. Seeing as I wasn't going to be working this year and was going to be home for thanksgiving I decided to race, figuring it would either be for fun or for a PR.
I have continued on my path of more focused run training. I have been using the interval paces as suggested by my measured vdot of a couple of weeks ago. Also, I have been continuing with the long runs in preparation for the Rock n Roll Las Vegas Half Marathon next weekend. With the continued focus on interval training I have started to feel more comfortable with running faster.
This morning I woke up and felt relatively good. Monday was a day off as prescribed, tuesday was a hard hour ride in the morning and a 45 min run in the afternoon with some threshold mile repeats. Wednesday off as prescribed by the coaching plan. I drove to the race site, parked at my grandfather's apartment exactly 0.2 miles from the finish line (the 6 mile marker was right out his door) kept warm, ate breakfast, enjoyed the company and then left to head down to the start corrals.
I met the requirements to qualify for the A corral and figured that there really won't be that many opportunities to run with the fast people up front so pulled the trigger and signed up to be in the front pack. It was a little chilly this morning, maybe around 40 degrees. I had a hat, gloves, shirts, and tights and felt just about the perfect temperature the entire race.
As the gun went off I was amazed at how quickly I was able to cross the start line and how people spread out pretty quickly and there wasn't much jockeying for space. My suspicion is that they held the remainder of the corrals for a short period to allow a little spacing. The first part of the race is down hill. I think that with the adrenaline surging and the downhill I might have gone out a little too fast. I knew that I was going to be passed by a few of the corral B people, and I didn't want to let it bother me so I just kept running my race and watching the pace on my watch as I went along.
I hit mile 1 at 7:03 which was in line with my 5k run test pacing, but I had a hunch that it probably wouldn't be sustainable for the rest of the race. At the same time, I actually felt really good, I wasn't winded, my legs felt loose, I was having fun. I figured the real pace where I should be running was going to be closer to a 7:15. Somewhere between mile 1 and 2 I was able to look forward and see the front of the pack and quickly turned around and I was the last person before a gap between me and the next group of runners. Thinking as if I was in a pack of animals being chased by the predator, decided I didn't want to be the slowest fast person and picked up the pace a little to catch up to the people in front of me. Regardless of my mind tricks, I was having a lot of fun racing at the pointy end of the field.
The race continued on, I felt pretty good running, tried to hit the corners on the course correctly and was just generally enjoying my day. I knew that if I was able to hold that 7:15 pace for the whole race that I would definitely beat my previous PR from February of this year when I ran a 46:24 10k.
I hit 5 miles still feeling like all cylinder were running and decided to increase the pace a little and push to the finish line. There was one small hill on my way and continued to keep my cadence and pace moving in the right direction.
I hit the finish line at 44:37 which was awesome. I was hoping to break 46 minutes and even though my most recent 5k test of 22:00 min suggested that I might be able to break 45 minutes I hadn't really considered it a true possibility. Eager to better understand my race, I got home and downloaded the data from the Garmin which is below.
HR stayed relatively constant, nothing much to talk about there.
I think the cadence was just intermittently dropping. Unclear exactly why that was happening unless something weird was happening on the turns as it was basically a straight shot from the start line until mile 2 when we started to make turns on the course. Again after about mile 5.2 it was a straight shot.
I think the biggest area of potential improvement is in my pacing. I started off pacing at 7:03 and increased up to a max of 7:19. While this spread isn't horrible, I was hoping for a little more consistency. I also clearly can see that I went out a little too hard and then was basically holding on the rest of the race.
Next week when I race vegas I am going to have to pay close attention to this pacing issue. Starting out too fast will be hugely problematic. I might intentionally add a few seconds to my goal pace for the first mile to really try and maintain good pacing and if I still feel great after about mile 7 to then start to increase the pace.
Overall summary - I am extremely happy with the race today. I have been thinking about breaking 45 minutes for some time, but hadn't really thought it would a possibility until recently. My time today was good for a top 10 finish in my age group (10/59) and 57/437 for males, and top 7% overall. Also the time today resulted in an increase of my vDot to 45.59 which suggests that my marathon pacing could be 7:51...mmm...next weekend could be interesting as well as the last race of the 2011 calendar year.
I'm looking forward to the Vegas half marathon next weekend.
