Times Colonist Part II: Be Like Seabiscuit!

I have admit that I was very disappointed in my race at the TC 10K. I honestly was expecting 40-45 minutes. But I have reconstructed a time line of mistakes and what I learned from them so that I am better for my goal race, the Provo Freedom Run 10K on July 4.

6 days before the race: I decide that my taper will consist of one hard ten miler the Monday before the race and then no running at all for five days. The thinking was that my legs will be fully rested for the run.

3 days before the race: I decide that my race plan will be to run the first 5K slow and the second 5K fast. The rationale is that by purposely running slower I don't risk burning out in the first 1/2 of the race, and I had some fast 5K training runs in the three weeks leading up to the race. If I could save some energy for the final 5K I could rip off another fast 5K.

The night before the race: I decide that my cadences will be 184 bpm for the first 5K and then jump to 196bpm and 224bpm for the final 5K.

The day of the race: I wake up at 6:00 AM for an 830 AM start. There was no rationale, I just couldn't sleep any more...

So here we are at the race. Actually 13000 people is alot more than I thought. I was warming up by running around the block but had to stop when the crowds of runners got too thick to run in. So I decided to walk up to the race start and eventually found a quiet corner where a couple of elite women runners were warming up. You could tell they were elite because they had impressive warm up stretches, cool sunglasses and shiny singlets. That and their race number said "elite".

So with about fifteen minutes to the race start I decided to get to my official starting area before it got too crowded. My race number was green because my estimated finish time was 45 minutes. So I was proud to line up in the green area near the front...until I look around and see just about every color lined up in my area. The nerve! I worked all winter for that race start position and these posers were crowding my space. I should have taken that for a clue.

Mayor Fortin was speaking before the race. Telling lame jokes etc and at one point even welcomed everybody to the tenth annual Times Colonist 10K race...except all the marketing posters, flags, t shirts etc said 20th Annual Times Colonist 10K. I don't think anyone else was listening to him though...

So we counted down the start and off we went. So here is where my decisions started to play a role. My five day taper had made my legs a little stiff. Combine that with a decision to start slow and me forgetting to start my stop watch meant that instead of running the first kilometer in 4:30, I ran it in 6:00! Except I didn't know that when I got to the 1K marker, because I hadn't started my stop watch...I guesstimated that I had run it in 5:00.

Also, I underestimated the size of the crowd. Its one thing to let 400 people run past you at the beginning and then to fight your way past the crowd later like I did at last years Victoria Marathon 8K. But it is quite another problem to let thousands bolt past you at the start and then try to fight your way through them later on. It was a disaster. The course quickly narrowed and I spent kilometer 2-5 boxed in at a 5-6 minute kilometer pace.

I hit the second half of the race discouraged by my time and worn out. I wasn't worn out from the pace, I was worn out by the mental effort of running through crowds. Then my fast cadences started. The problem was that although I had run to each individual song before in training, I had never run to each song in a row for a full sustained 5 kilometers. It became readily apparent that I could not maintain the pace. Unfortunately, I had not put any backup medium tempo cadences in the playlist, so I had to revert back to my slow tempo cadence the rest of the way. I pushed as hard as I could, but could never get into a rhythm. I was happy to cross the line at 48, because it sure felt alot harder than that.

Afterwards I got some advice from my brother Aaron. He races triathlons. First of all, it was nice to have another athlete to discuss the race with. Non competitive runners just don't understand what its like to train for months and then come up with a disappointing effort when it matters. Anyhow, he pointed out that the problem was traffic management and race tactics. Without going into details the new strategy is to attack the first kilometer and then run the race, attacking when the course allows and settling when it doesn't.

Its not my style to run hard at first. I need a couple of kilometers to get loosened up then I take off. But that is what cost me the race. A friend at church pointed out that Seabiscuit was the same way. Remember Seabiscuit? In order for him to race War Admiral, they had to retrain him to run hard right at he beginning. So I have to be like Seabiscuit. I have to train to run hard at the start without dying at the finish.