End of the Season

It's been a busy and good running season for me with 13 races completed. Curious at how my end of season 1/2 marathon pace was faster than my April 5k! Must have been doing some things right!

My goals were achieved at all of the distances except the marathon but I wouldn't exchange the Big Sur experience for any time goal! It's been a great season for me and there have been a few unexpected bonuses like the nice little piece of hardware from this past weekend's race for getting my age group ;-)
But... we're never totally satisfied are we? Take this last race at Moncton Legs for Literacy. It seems that I've yet to learn how to race the 5k. My splits as usual went from too fast, to slow and then to even slower before buckling down a tiny bit before final 'sprint' finish. The overall time of 21:26 was barely faster than the 1st 5k in my last 1/2 marathon race from a week ago! The 1st k in 3:50 was the usual suicidal killer which got me in a hole that was hard to get out of and the rest of the race was basically just hanging on and trying not to get passed.

At least there was no sprint finish required as you can see in the video. Trevor was also here in the same race and got 2nd in his age group! His improvements are amazing over the past year. Results are here.
It's now time for a break from the racing but not from running. I'll be setting some new goals for next year which will include another go at the sub-20 5k and other distances as well. This time I'm going to try to put together a more coherent plan which will come together over the winter as Andrew & I work at building up our base. I might even run a spring marathon before kicking into some 5-10k race training for the summer. This time I won't let little things like a sore back or a long trip on a boat keep me from doing what is needed to get to the goal.

A few quotes to remind you that:

"There's no such thing as bad weather, just soft people."
Bill Bowerman

"Train, don't strain."
Arthur Lydiard



Have a great week and good running!