Haven't even run yet today; track workout is this evening. Which is great, because that means I can ride my bike a bit more this morning. I just have to blog out some of my jumbled thoughts about Saturday's race so that I can stop carrying them around in my head. Here's what I did right: Rested, relaxed, slept well and ate well the day before Did a good warm up before the race Kept my left arm and shoulder relaxed the whole time! This is big. Used focus and relaxation to control any difficult asthma related breathing glitches. Kept positive thoughts going the entire time. Never felt defeated. Had negative splits in the middle of the race. This is a first. Used the inhaler before any wheezing started. Didn't yell obscenities at the band in the tunnel. Ran in my skirt and loved it. Here's what I did wrong: MAYBE went out just a bit too fast. Splits could have been :15 sec slower at the very start. Got messed up with the asthma meds. I absolutely need to figure this thing out, so that it doesn't wreck any more races. Did not finish strong enough! My splits in the last three miles went way down, and cost me my goal. Got to find a way to push harder at the end. This is especially disappointing since the end of this course is pretty easy, with lots of downhills. Here's what I need to do to fix it: Talk to Dr. immediately and figure out the meds. Find the cause of the asthma and deal with that. Spend more time visualizing the mentally rehearsing the end of the race. Maybe even "practice" this on some runs, where I progressively get faster in small (:15 second) increments. OK, that's enough obsessing about that one! Time to move on and run some more. PM - this evening's workout was hard on still tired legs! Felt great though to run a bit. I didn't time my strides, but they were very slow. My mile splits were: 9:23 (warm up), 9:30, 9:22, 9:36, 9:45. Last 1/2 mile was 4:50.
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