Should be gritting your teeth from start to finish.
At what point of a 10k race should one really be hurting really bad?
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Just tell yourself the best pace is a suicide pace and today feels like good day to die.
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Sara Palin wrote:
I mostly agree with this. For me in XC, things got painful early (like mile 1) because we went out hard. Also I had an inefficient sride.
inefficient stride? so...it took more energy for you to run fast?
I'm guessing your problem wasn't an inefficient stride, just poor fitness. -
800 dude wrote:
No good answer here. 10k is long enough that you can enter and exit rough patches. You can be hurting bad at 3 miles, hold the same pace, and suddenly feel better at 4. I think it's because so much of the 10k's pain is about the mismatch between how you feel and how you think you should feel. I always feel pretty darn good at 5 miles because that's when I realize that I'm going to get to kicking range with at least a little something left. At three miles, it's easy to start thinking that there's no way you can go twice as far again at the same pace, and that doubt has the effect of amplifying your pain.
In the 5k, by contrast, I don't think the expectations play as much of a role. The race is characterized by a steady buildup of oxygen debt that gets pretty serious by the end, but in the middle of a 5k, everyone should be feeling pretty darned good.
Interesting to read this. I agree that 10k (and I would add 5 miles/8k) are awkward distances. Your description of a 5k is perfect.
For me, a 5 mile/8k is so close to 5k pace that they always sort of feel like a 5k that's gone horribly wrong when there's 3k to go. :) -
Easy does it wrote:
too hot wrote:
Smoove wrote:
I can't find the exact study, but this study touches on the same concept as the study I previously read but can't find: we tend to reach our perceived effort at the same relative point in races of various distances (and that point,
According to the study that I cannot find, is at about 70% of the way through the race).
That's consistent with the 4 mile mark answers (which would've been my answer too), is consistent with the 2 mile mark or so for a 5k (again, my answer), and is at the 18.3 mile mark of a marathon (probably a little early since most people blow up closer to 20, but not by too much).
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00712.x/full
Running is not a science and racing is to an even lesser degree.
Unfortunately, you are a slave to the watch and to charts and to formulas instead of really learning how to ride that fine edge.
While Smoove is not an elite runner, he has some very respectable racing times and achievements especially for his age. He also coaches others too. We all know running is not exclusively a science, he's just noting a study that was done to show a correlation between racing distance and when people begin to feel major effects from the race is all.
You don’t know him as well as I do. Good runners are not necessarily good coaches. It’s okay to be analytical, science-based, and fluent in Daniels. But he takes it to an extreme. -
When I was running my best times (35 years ago) my 10K's usually followed the same pattern.
I had a good idea going in what pace it would take to set a PR.
I'd make sure the first two miles were no more than 3-4 seconds faster than my finishing pace. The first two miles felt relatively easy. Miles 3 & 4 felt like I was working really hard to maintain the pace. Miles 5 & 6 were hell.
My legs always felt like they could go faster, but my lungs were screaming. -
Libertarian vegan wrote:
4 mile point,but if you push throw it you'll break on through to the other side. Remember it is better to burn out then to fade away.
THAN fade away
Push THROUGH it -
2k-2400 left! Commonalities in this thread. A slow grind. Controlled aggression till you only have to focus for 6 min and your good!
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Haters be Hating!
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old guy 72 wrote:
When I was running my best times (35 years ago) my 10K's usually followed the same pattern.
I had a good idea going in what pace it would take to set a PR.
I'd make sure the first two miles were no more than 3-4 seconds faster than my finishing pace. The first two miles felt relatively easy. Miles 3 & 4 felt like I was working really hard to maintain the pace. Miles 5 & 6 were hell.
My legs always felt like they could go faster, but my lungs were screaming.
My experience was pretty much the same - the first 1/3 was breezy and felt great, the middle portion took a lot more mental focus to stay on pace, with nagging doubts starting to creep in, but not too bad. The last 1/4 of the race was so painful I began to dread 10ks!
One caveat that has been sort of implied, but not specifically stated: some road courses may have a hilly finish over the last mile or so, or else a hilly start etc - so racing according to when you should hurt is incomplete, you may have to suffer a bit of pain at the start if it's hilly, or save a bit for the end.
This applies to biking, not sure if to running, but for 40k time trials (about an hr for decent rider), the most optimal approach on hills is to ride a little harder on the uphill, harder effort than even-paced, because you can recover a bit on downhill, and more crucially, the uphills are much slower so the increased wind resistance of speeding up is much less of an impact as it would be on the downhill. You'd have to be a pretty fast runner for wind resistance to be impactful, but it's possible and worth considering. -
4.5 miles is a pretty good consensus for pain in the 10K. But it also depends on where you are in your training cycle, and your taper for the race. Other factors include: What is your goal? If it's a P.R., yes you should be sweating bullets mid-way through mile 4.
If it's to win the race, well it depends on the competition.
Then there is the X-factor. There are some days where you just can't throw it down, you can't get in your groove, you're gonna hurt the whole way and run slowish.
Other days, you are golden, can do no wrong, you can BLAST the distance, run a PR and feel oddly fresh when it's over. -
Oh, and don't forget - even when you are running BALLS OUT, you are r-e-l-a-x-e-d, yes? Remember, Carl Lewis was relaxed as heck when he was setting records and winning gold medals.
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4 miles you really need to start to focus on not slowing down. A rule of thumb is, at 4.5 or so if it feels on pace you're probably slowing. By mile 5 you're just wishing it was over. If you can get to 800 without problems you're good - by that time it's time to race.
