Did my 10 mins warm up.
I am torn on this. On the one hand my goal was to finish strong and to feel that I had beaten the course. I didn’t do either of those. On the other hand, although I didn’t get my fastest time, I did get my fastest pace on this race (according to Strava it was nearly half a mile longer than the last time I did it in 2021).
I think I paced it well, and was keeping the pace normally just under 9 min/mile and the heart rate comfortable under 150 (except when going uphill). Around 9 or 10 miles I started to feel like it was getting difficult, but kept going and was still ok at the hill at 11 miles. I did 30 secs of walking in the middle of that hill, but kept running rest. The later hills were difficult, but some further walking breaks allowed me to run at an ok pace still. But, the last mile and a half I was beaten and probably walked more than I ran. I shouldn’t be too disappointed as it was probably the heat that did me in the end, and it didn’t help that the water stations all had warm water! Having now recovered and stopped feeling sick, and also having seen Strava and other people’s times it was probably a pretty good performance.
That was a lot of words wasn’t it! Don’t try to match that in your response!
I like the long feedback. I appreciate it that you take the time to share your feelings. It’s important. I think what probably sums it up the best is my first impression when scrolling through Strava, as I was then comparing runners with the times of others on the day and my first instinct was “Wow, Ben did well”. I don’t think you can really appreciate just how much difference the heat makes on a race like that, and the hills come just at the wrong time. I think that is summed up by the fact HR and pace are perfectly in Z3, RPE is 8/10 (Z6). And that is tough, to have to work that hard to hit that pace. I think overall we can take positives from this and fitness will have gone up another notch.
Coach Simon 🍊
