That's More Like It!

Here I am finishing my 1st 10k of the season today in what felt like a respectable time of 46:09 (at least it was close to my current capability). I made it to the start and ran a more conservative plan this time (not blowing up in the 1st mile) and was 'not' passed by innumerable dogs and 10 year old kids. Results are now up and I have some race pics here.

But 1st a little more backstory... as my dental issues continued to plague me all last week culminating in yet another visit to the 'man' who deemed me a 'problem patient' and prescribed more drugs to fight the infection and swelling. Well the 'drugs' have kicked in and my face is now returning to normal but they had one undesirable side-effect of requiring me to avoid alcohol in any quantity or face severe nausea. The man has no heart! At least I can still eat ice cream!

Last week was up and down as far as the running went with a good tempo run on Tuesday including 3x1000m cruise intervals to test what felt like a good 10k effort. Besides this there was some easy runs and a day off at the instruction of Coach who was of the opinion that I'm rushing back into my training too quickly. On Saturday I managed to get together with my good buddy Andrew for a nice short run on a beautiful little trail in Calais. Andrew is recovering from a calf strain which sounded more like an Achilles strain as we talked it over. Hopefully some RICE will fix him up and we can get back to the Boyden runs again soon!

Back to today's little race... As you can see from the course profile this was not a flat, fast course, in fact it was advertised as 'rolling' with beautiful scenery! Beware when they say rolling! Kinda sounds like another race I did recently which had monster hills to go with the awesome views. We got to the race in lots of time for me to sign up and then scope out the 1st kilometer or so with the initial large incline (with a view of the golf course if you cared). I'm glad I did because it put the fear of lactic explosion into my old legs and helped me to try to hold back.

The 1st conservative kilometer went by in 4:40 and the 2nd with the hill was a well earned 5:00. After that there were some nice downs and ups and I worked at holding an even effort which had the result of my trading places back and forth depending on the up/down with a couple of runners over the rest of the race. One lady in particular (who finished just in front in picture) must have traded places with me 4 times during the race and I didn't want to make a spectacle of myself with a final pass at the line. The 5k mark went by in a nice 22:56 (only 30s slower than the Lincoln 5k fiasco) but I was thinking that I was not happy of doing 5 more kilometers at this effort. More hills and scenery kept me company over the next bit and besides trading places with the lady and getting annoyed with a guy jumping in the race to pace his friend for a mile or so I began to revert to counting in my head to keep the legs turning. The final 2k were a steady gradual uphill grind but I notice that the splits were also the fastest with 4:37 and 4:22 as we cruised into the finish gasping like fish out of water (myself at least).

So, a good race, good effort and I've now got some work to do if I want to get my 5-10k times down to low 20's or 40's by the end of the season. It should be interesting!

Have a great week!