Road Racing and Training Thread - Week Ending 2/13/22

M, 35, 132 lbs. Fairly new to running. Started in June of 2020 and got hooked very quickly. No athletic background, was a smoker for 18 years, smoke free for 3 1/2 now:)

Recently ran my second ever race a few weeks ago, a HM and thought I'd share my experience. I clearly went out too quickly and faded at around the 10KM mark. Looking back at it, this is where I should've been picking it up not slowing down. My pacing strategy went out the window as I got sucked in with a group that was a bit out of my league. My 5KM splits were, 17:45 - 36:25 - 55:51 and I came in at 1:21 low while I was aiming for 1:17. The weather was pretty much perfect, sunny a bit chilly, no wind and it was a fast course. I mentally just didn't have it in me, the negativity and panic crept in as my cadence started to drop and HR started to rise. I even stopped for 20 seconds at 19KM which i've never done before. It was a tough day, one that had me wanting to quit on several occasions. I have very little experience with racing but once that dread enters your mind early it can really take a lot to dig yourself out of it, push on and find that relaxed state again.

Training went relatively well as to why I thought I would be able to run 1:17 in the first place but looking back at it there wasn't enough of it to get me there. Winter was tough, there were a few heavy snowy weeks that setback wo's and I caught a mild but debilitating hamstring issue 3 weeks before the race which significantly cut back my milage. Luckily it didn't rear its head on race day. I was hitting around 75-100KM weeks during the 8 weeks that I had to prepare.

Here are some of my wo's:

4x2km, (2:00")ar, 7:00, 7:02, 7:02, 7:12

4x1000, 3x500, 2x200, 5x100, (2:00", 1:30", 1:00", .30")ar

3:18, 3:22, 3:19, 3:20 - 1:34, 1:35, 1:34 - .33, .34 - .16, .17, .17, .17, .17

LR 28KM avg 4:25KM

WU 2KM, 8KM 4:16-3:40, 1KM E, 2KM 3:40, 1KM E, 1KM 3:28, CD 3.5KM

Mind you these were only done once around the 6-4 weeks from the race.

Aside from not running these workouts enough, was I running them too fast? They didn't necessarily knock me out and gave me a good confidence boost but maybe that also gave me a false impression of my fitness?

1) No 2) They were not HM specific enough to give a good idea of how the race would go, but both of those workouts were in the wheelhouse fitnesswise of somebody trying to run 77. If you ran closer to 5:55 pace rather than 5:45 pace at the start you probably would have had a good shot at 77.

This is last weeks thread, feel free to join us in our weekly thread, new one up every sunday.

Agree. You need longer intervals (4x2 mile is a classic) and longer harder efforts that teach you run fast on tired legs (e.g. 2x3 miles at HM pace run at the beginning and end of a long run). Additionally just getting in a few more races will help. You seem like you have some solid talent! Keep posting!

Thanks, RunnerSam and highhoppingworm for the insight I appreciate it!

I agree, the longer efforts with progressive T paces make a lot of sense as they seem to be a good way of simulating the workload of a race. Also glad to know the paces I was running in the wo's weren't too excessive. I forgot to mention, I ran my first ever Mile TT last summer in high heat at 4:51 which is what I was basing my paces on. Could have been a bit more conservative but still seems relative to my current fitness. Will keep posting once I start running again as the tendon's on the top of my right foot have been a bit sore so I'm taking a week off to see if they settle.

Hoping to run another HM at the end of June and my first 10K come mid July:)

Can't wait to get back to it, a few days feels like an eternity when you're used to running everyday;)