Everything with a grain of salt: The top 24 women in the Berlin Marathon ran their first 10k faster than my race today :/ I am monitoring since Chi Ngan Chow (chinese name for Alison) is running it. Warmed up 4.63, part with Alexis, as lass from Connecticut/NYC. She is an attorney turned attorney recruiter. Very nice lass (I call her a lass because she's not a girl and calling her a woman means she might be older than me, but she's a few years younger). I have been feeling off all week, somewhat throaty, weak in the stomach, but felt fine this morning. Nervous for what the race will bring. This is the downside of racing only once a month--each race becomes a bit more important. What is great about only occasional racing is that you don't have a race disrupting your training (afraid to train to hard, etc).
This race is rolly. The weather was pretty good, prob 79-81ish, abt 70% humidity (too humid). I thought I might wear my singlet but after warming up and getting it all sweaty I changed to my sports bra. Plan for the race was to go out 3:45 pace/k then try to push faster on the way back. Rolly both ways, but more uphill out and more downhill back. I would say the first 5k is about 15-20 seconds slower than the second half. I just averaged the first 21 racers (I was number 21) and the average negative split was 13 seconds, so the difference likely is 20-25 (most run second half slower than first half, even among the faster runners?). Lets see if I beat that (I don't know yet, this is so exciting!). Play by play. 1k - 3:41.71 (flat, on bricklike cobblestones), 2k 3:43.79 (first half flat, second half uphill), 3k - 3:43.89 (flatish?), 4k - 3:53.76 (net uphill), 5k - 3:45.76 (first half downhill, then second half uphill, not liking the uphill, feel myself slip a bit mentally here. On one stretch I told myself, I will care next kilometer--a bad attitude, I know). 180 turnaround! 6k 3:46.63 (first half downhill, second downhill, inverse of the 5k, abt same pace as the 5k), 7k - 3:34.11 (inverse of 4k, abt 10 sec faster), 8k - 3:43.14 (abt the same as 3k), 9k - 3:35.8 (first half downhill, second flat, abt 8 sec faster), 10k 3:30.68 (abt 11 sec faster, I thought I had 500m left at 1k left, so I sped up, then realized I had about 700m to go, so pushed with not much left in the tank, probably an ok way to finish a race anyway, pretend there's 500m left when there's 1000m left). I also had 3 more seconds tacked on the end. Measured 10.06 total. So splits add up to 18:48.91 for first half, 18:10.36 for the second half (add the 3 seconds where you will). So that is 38 seconds difference. So I think all my progression runs and progressive intervals are paying off! Finally a 10k where I did not die at the end, instead negative splitted. So I beat my first HK 10k by 2 minutes. Comparing the two races, today was cooler, but probably the same humidity, and today's was hillier. I am happy with my race, though I would have liked 36:59 a tad better. Given how I have felt this week, I am really happy with the race. I figure the weather was worth 1 min and the hills were worth 30 seconds, so I feel like this was the best road race 10k have done. Legs felt really good, even in the cool down and now hours later. Next couple of weeks I'll be going back to higher mileage. Wish me luck. I could use a bit more fitness, but the most critical thing is to not get injured. I am grateful that moving to HK has not derailed my running, for God's gift of this time in my life to run competitively.
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