Name of Race – Sporting Life 10K
Website for the Race – http://www.canadarunningseries.com/sportinglife/index.htm
Date of Race – Sunday, May 6th, 2007
Location of Race – Toronto, Ontario – Yonge Street
Type of Race – Road Running
Distance or duration of Race – 10K
Description of Race – a nice downhill trot along Yonge Street with 9,000 of my closest friends!
The Race:
All I can say is…that sucked! After a breakthrough race last year, I had high expectations for the race this year. The weather was beautiful, the crowd was great and I ran in to a ton of people/friends this year. I was excited for a fast race, a strong race and an overall good feeling of accomplishment at the end. But I had lofty expectations and now in hindsight made a few mistakes which I need to learn from.
I had concentrated on my run this year but had sacrificed swimming for it. (Mistake #1) Because of that I was carrying a bit more weight in to the race than I would have liked too, but my training runs had been quick and felt good so I thought I was on track.
The race started an hour earlier this year which was nice for me. Up early and out of the house. Parked in the exact same spot on Briar Hill as last year and picked up my race package. Ran in to a bunch of people I knew and chatted with them – made the lead up to the race start manageable.
Decided to try a few different things in this race since it would be a good place to try them out – tried a GU for the first time and crumpled up my race number before attaching it to the race belt. Both minor in nature. The GU went down great and crumpling the race number worked marvelously.
Last year I had seeded myself in what I believed was my right speed (50-55 minutes) and ended up passing a lot of people. So this year I moved myself up to what I wanted to achieve (41-49 minutes but near the front of that pack). (Mistake #2)
When the gun went off, I got in to a fast pace for me but wanted to try and go out hard and maintain the pace. Hit 1K at 4:25…2K at 9:00…3K at 13:45…uh oh, I’m in trouble. Last year I went out at a sub 5 minute pace and maintained it. This year I went out hard, and basically blew it too early…went too hard and then struggled. (Mistake #3) I decided to push on and try to hit decent splits. Went through 5K at 23:45 which was still quicker than last year but my splits were getting slower by the kilometer. By 7K, my pace was way off and the last 2K were a struggle. With about 400m to go, I was already off my time from last year and just wanted to save face. Crossed the line in 50:21 and was pretty unhappy. I was bummed (and still am today, as well as being a little stiff) but overall, I learned from the race.
Looking back at my mistakes, this is what I can take from them.
- Mistake #1: sacrificing my strong point in the swim for other disciplines. This is a three discipline sport and I need to focus on all three. My swim keeps my weight down and I need to get back in the pool. I should have kept it up but didn’t.
- Mistake #2: seeding myself to where I want to be instead of where I currently am. The feeling of passing people is a great one. Being passed sucks! By seeding myself too high, I took off at their pace, struggled to keep up and then faded…and got passed by tons of people. Very demoralizing in the end. I need to seed myself at my pace and if I go faster, then great, I’ll be passing people. If I don’t, oh well.
- Mistake #3: not recognizing the struggle and trying to push through it. I should have known early that this wasn;t going to be the day and tried to at least salvage a small PB instead of my goal time. If I had done that and backed off on ym pace early, I think I would have had a decent race. Instead, I kept trying to push hard and hit a wall at 8K.
All in all, a good learning day. Placing doesn’t matter much for me but I do like to keep track. 1637/8003 OA; 1276/3662 Gender and 250/637 AG.
Next up is the first triathlon of the season where I start to put some early season strong swims and runs together and pray that my bike fitness is there – June 9th at Lakeside. It’s a short race and a new one for me so it should be fun. June will be a busy month as I’m racing three straight weekends (Lakeside, Binbrook, Bell City Chase), but I’m looking forward to it.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
