After picking up my gleaming, glorious bike from its service at the bike shop, I went to the meet at Box Hill aths club today to once and truly draw a line in the sand for pre Europe fitness.
Fantastic day for it, much better than last week. I went to the admin tent to get myself an invitation to compete and was astonished to find they wanted $5 from me! They didn't ask for anything last week:O I didn't have my wallet, so had to swear that I would join the club and pay $5 with my fees. (It was a bit of a false promise at the time, but after seeing the facilities and talking with some of the members, I think I actually will)
Hung out for a while before my event and had a chat with CR TigerBoy, who was doing about 8 events today including the hammerthrow! (He seriously does not look like a hammer thrower:P But he loves competing for his club, so good on him)
There were three heats for the 3000m (no 5000 today unfortunately) and I was advised against going in the first heat because it would've been too fast for me. They called it out as sub 10:30, so I probably would've been ok given my goal of 10:25, but I probably would've been at the back of the pack and hadn't done my warmup, so I just watched from the sidelines as the lead runner faded miserably to 5th after 6 laps. Started my warmup with 20 minutes to go. My leg was a bit troublesome at first, but got better quite quickly after that, which is a great sign. I haven't usually been doing my warmups that slow (~6:30/k), so that's something I'll do from now on.
Lined up at the start, set my garmin and leapt out as the gun went off. There were obviously a few other people who didn't want to be at the back of the pack in the first heat, because I went out with the lead pack and looked down to discover that the opening pace was 3:10/k. Backed right off after 200m, because I wanted to run a very controlled race. It was very awkward running with the garmin - constantly flicking between data fields to make sure I wasn't going too fast, but it paid dividends. I went through the first k in 3:20 (a little fast I guess, but I was ok with that), then got into a good rhythm with the second k right on pace at 3:27. I was starting to struggle with three laps to go. The pace slipped down to 3:35/k and the guys in front were drawing away, but I managed to put on a decent kick in the last two laps, finishing up with another 3:27 split for the 3rd and last km....
Problem was, my garmin and the athletics track did not agree about the distance I had run. I still had 80m to go! To be fair, I did run wide on a few occasions, but I'm doubtful that it added up to 80m. I guess it's a lesson learned for me. Next time I'll just look at the 200m splits. It was a perfectly run race apart from that though. I've never held myself back so well before and it felt great to end up with a PB at the end that I felt I really deserved. Going by the Garmin I did it in 10:17, but I'm going to be conservative and go with the marshall's time of 10:28 (that way it'll be easier to PB next time:P).
I was pretty buggered at the end, but to be honest, I think I could've gone harder. When things started to hurt with 3 laps to go, I really should've started to push and tried to maintain 3:20 low. I think that's something I have to learn about racing these shorter distances. If you want to get a good time, it's got to really hurt!
Laid in the sun after that and waited until the 800m heats started (not because I was tired or anything, I was just building up my Vitamin D stores;)). It was a long wait! I wisely followed TigerBoy's advice and went in the 2:30 heat, which was one of the last ones (amazing how many more super fit people are into the shorter events). I had no idea how to race the 800 except for the concept of 'Go out hard the first lap and try not to fade too much!' That's exactly what I did. Faded pretty badly the second lap to finish in 2:33, which according to the calculators is a massive underperformance:P Oh well, I haven't been doing the right kind of training to do well in that event, and it also means I'm almost certain to PB next time I do one:P
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My leg's feeling pretty good right now. I took yesterday off because it was so sore after a relatively easy workout on the treadmill. Might go for a run tomorrow, but I'm keen to not do too much too soon. I'll probably stick at 20km per week for a while until I don't have any problems at all.
I'm enjoying setting some big PBs despite reducing my mileage massively:P It's enough to make a man want to back away from Lydiardism! But not really because I know my improvement now is due to all of the base work I've done this year plus a few sharpening workouts in the last 6 weeks.
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Pretty much everything's sorted for the trip now. Just have to start packing!
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