This was the first bad race of the year. The race started at 7pm in a town, Bolsena, in front of the Bolsena lake. The weather was great, cool breeze and 20°C, and overall I was feeling relaxed and ready to go. I wanted to run well in terms of competion, the race has one big climb and short nasty rollers, my overall goal was trying to stay with a couple of guys that were slightly faster than me during the last two races and finish around 35:50-36:10. We started on time, the first 3k were flat and I was doing fine following my unofficial pacers at 3:47/k. We did a couple of kms of climb with lots of switchbacks, I was still on their heels but usually going uphill I feel stronger, today it was not the case. When we entered the rollers, 2k of ups and downs, I was done I started loosing ground and on the downhill I was passed by at least 10 people as I was a roadkill. The last k was just painful and I wanted to be done already. Even at the end I tried my best to finish with 36:xx but didn't happen. I am not sure what was my problem today, for sure I haven't done many kms during the last 3 weeks, and this week at work was really stressfull. I have no clear answer, I was not giving up and I was determined until the end, but somehow by legs and my breathing were working much harder than they should. I will start from here my summer training and see what happens.
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