Maria's Running Blog

No running. Spent hours in very hot and humid pool cheering for my daughter. It was all worth it, though, as she swam 3 PRs out of 4 events, and got 1:16.35 for 100m butterfly - a very respectable time, slashing 2.2 sec. in just 3 weeks. The coaches were surprised, and the Head Coach talked to her about joining Top Squad in September. She is elated beyond words, even though it will mean going to some morning sessions (training twice a day) at 6AM before school! I'm very proud of her, and she deserves all the credit, as she worked incredibly hard all year.

easy run late at night. I'm feeling the effects of reduced mileage. Have to do much better with consistency and overall mileage, get back to at least 40 per week.

Total time: 45:28 (8:56 pace).

easy run, including 4x20 sec. strides (~100m). Felt better than yesterday, despite very strong winds at times. I need one more run tomorrow, and then I'll do the Club Championship 5K on Thursday.

Total time: 1:01:41 (8:41 pace).

easy run plus 4x100m strides on the track. Felt pretty good and was able to generate good turnover on strides.

Total time: 46:35 over 5.3mi (8:45 pace) - I didn't time the strides.

Today I woke up with a stuffy nose. Great, right before the race. The stuffiness went away mostly during the day, but I had a bit of a runny nose and scratchy throat all day. I feel the cold coming on.

But anyway, went to the race and did the warmup. The weather was not bad, although not ideal: about 70F, no wind, cloudy, but very humid. I predicted I would run 22:30 based on my mile race a week ago, so my plan was to run ~4:29 per km. There were km markers and they were in the right places too. The course was completely flat, with very slight inclines and down slopes. Good PR course, 1.5 laps around the park, no sharp turns. I found a woman who ran 6:13 mile last week, and figured I would stay behind her as long as I could (provided I was within my target pace). It didn't quite work out that way, because she slowed after 2km, and I passed her and beat her in the race! I ran pretty even pace, and was able to speed up on last km, but it got really tough the last 1.5km. I was pushing the pace, but I was also slowing down from fatigue, so in the end the pace didn't increase that much.

Splits by kilometers:

1.03km - 4:29 (4:22 pace)

1.01km - 4:26 (4:24 pace)

1.02km - 4:30 (4:25 pace)

992m - 4:22 (4:24 pace)

1.01km - 4:23 (4:21 pace)

Total time: 22:13 for 5.06km.

I'm pretty happy with this race, I did better than expected. It's only 8 sec. slower than my best last year, and with the reduced mileage and all the skipped runs it's not a bad result. Maybe all these short races did help me a little. I'm also happy with my pacing, I didn't kill myself with an unrealistic start, and I had a decent finish. I don't think I could have gone faster today - I was hurting pretty bad the last 1.5km and just fighting to stay on pace.

Ran a good 2 mile cooldown, so got pretty good mileage for the day.

Update: got an SMS on my mobile with official results: 77th overall, 14th woman, 3rd F35-39. Age-graded 68.6% - the highest this year.

My cold is in full swing now. Stuffy/runny nose and scratchy throat continue. I didn't feel all that great during the day, but once I started running I felt ok. Didn't want to focus on pace, and the fact that I forgot to reset Garmin to statute units, helped, because I can't relate well to pace per km. I started at 5:33 min/km, but then progressed to 5:26 by the end. It seemed that after an hour or so, I kind of shifted into another gear - breathing became easier, and pace faster. I did feel fatigue coming on in the last 3 miles, but it didn't affect my pace.

Total time: 1:55:58 (8:46 pace).