never look back? wrote:
Well I was running for a PR, but it would have been nice to be in the top-5.
Next time, I'll know better. Better than celebrating early I guess.
If you were running for a PR, shouldn't you have been running all-out as fast as you could? If you were already going as fast as you could, how would know some other guys coming up behind you matter? You said they caught you with a kilometer to go? That's more than enough time to beat them if you actually had more in you than you were giving. It's not like they passed you with less than 50m to go and you didn't have time to respond.
If you're in a tactical race situation or running a race "for the win" and not going all out, then looking back makes sense since you're only giving just enough effort to win and want to make sure someone isn't sneaking up on you ... if they are you can speed up since you aren't going all out.
But if you're racing all out already, looking back and seeing someone isn't going to make a difference. Maybe you'll get a mental boost to speed up knowing someone is going to catch you, but in this case you had an entire kilometer left so that's plenty of time to react to them and still beat them if you were capable of it. Really, if you had looked back and seen them coming with a mile to go, how would have the race ended any differently?