Woke up feeling fine today, no signs of yesterday's race in my legs, although the remnants of my headcold still with me.
Did an easy 6-7 mile run along the canal with R, dodging the large puddles and discussing yesterday's Abbey Dash.
Still can't quite decide why I was that 1 minute slower than I thought I should be?
Possible reasons:
- leftovers from my cold
- too many too-hard sessions over the last few weeks that I hadn't recovered from
- the wrong taper (I did nothing for the three previous days)
- Not enough pre-race food (just a lighter breakfast than normal)
- not enough warm-up (I just did a few 300m jogs and some strides)
- head not in the game (I think it was though with so many IH vests around me)
None of these reasons feel right.
I also realised that my 10k split in the Lancaster HM a fortnight ago was not much slower than my Abbey Dash time, so I'm sure something wasn't quite right. My ave HR was also lower than my HM rates - I just couldn't maintain my early speed through the back third of the race.
I am keen to try an understand why, as I don't want to have another "bad day" on April 25th.
I feel at one level that I now need to go and run some more 10k races, but I know I need to keep my eyes on the prize (VLM). This Saturday is a planned long run and this should be my focus rather than the Wesham 10k or the Thirsk 10m.
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Paul
ReplyDeleteSometimes we just have an 'off day', which could well have been caused by the effects of your cold, or the other factors. There are times when I've run much slower than expected & others when I've been much faster than I thought possible. The key is to try to identify the factors which contribute to these good/bad days & try to manage them for important races. I don't claim to be an expert on this.
Having said all of that you still did a PB, so it wasn't a complete disaster!
Got to say I wouldn't beat yourself up about it - it's a big PB and a WAVA score of over 79%. I've found that since running sub-40 more regularly improvements whilst they come do tend not to be in big chunks. The other thing about Sunday is that the second half was definitely tougher than the first - it was into the wind, and there's a pull up to te headrow rather than down the slip road going out - not massive but worth a few seconds either way. You were a few yards ahead of me at the turn and I remember thinking that 36.xx wasn't on as we'd need to run a big negative split, and abbey dash just isn't a course for doing that. Just pat yourself on the back and maybe do ribble valley at Xmas.
ReplyDeleteHave a look at this site:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.runningforfitness.org/calc/rp.php
If you put in your 10k time, it gives you various methods of estimating your time for other distances. With your Abbey Dash time, the average estimate for a marathon is 2:53.....so nothing to worry about.
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ReplyDeleteA PB is a great result, well done.
ReplyDeleteThanks all, for comments and support.
ReplyDelete