Ugh. I have been dreading writing this report. Utter disappointment. If it weren't for being able to hang out with old friends on this trip, it would have been a total waste of gas. The sad details... Drove out of D.C. after renting a sweet, golden Chevy Cobalt (my Jeep is out of commission) and found myself in grid-lock traffic for next hour on I-270 to Frederick. Made it into Albany at 12:30 a.m. Jon Healey arranged a room at the Days Inn right across the street from SUNY, Albany. Woke up at 5 a.m. and went for a 2 mile shakeout. Eat a bowl of Trader Joe's Cranberry Oat Clusters and then walked next door to Starbucks to read and have coffee (now 6:00 a.m.). At 7 I went to wake Healey and stretch out and watch ESPN. At 8 I had a vanilla Frappaccino and ate a chewy granola bar (this is the same drill I went through at Oxy last month). At 9:30 we (Healey and I) went over to the track and checked in and at 10 we started a 3 mile warm up. It was already starting to get hot. They called us to the start a bit early and I really did not get to do all the striders I would have liked. I probably got 4 striders in. I threw some water on my head and got ready to go. There was a pretty good field assembled, with qualifying times ranging from 15 flat to 16ish. This looked to be perfect... surely I could find a group to go 15:30. Well, indeed there was such a group... only not the one I was in! Before the race, Jon had talked to another guy who said he was shooting for 15:30 and I was fairly confident that Healey was in 15:30 shape as well. So, there did not seem to be any reason to go crazy at the start, since it appeared we had a group that could hit 15:30 with even splits. At the gun the field quickly broke into two groups. I stayed in the second group and we went through the first lap in 74, perfect. Then 73s for the next two and another 74 for a 4:56. first mile. This is exactly where I wanted to be. But for whatever reason, the heat, wind, whatever, things got really hard really fast, and within a lap Healey and I were by ourselves. We traded a couple of quarters, but Jon then fell off pace and I managed to get through the second mile in roughly 5:02. And here is where I crumbled mentally. It was just like the 3x1mile workout I had a couple of weeks ago... just did not want to go. The group ahead of me was in striking distance and I should have been able to use them as a target and go after them... but just didn't. Instead of focusing on the work at hand I just started thinking about how much I wanted the race to be over. Hence, the quarter splits just started going downhill, 76,77,78,79, for roughly a 5:12 last mile. I scorched the last 200 with a 34.9. Well, back to the drawing board. There are too many factors to point my finger at just one and say that was the problem. I could blame the heat, but I have been working out in the heat. I could blame the drive, but in CA I had a 6 hr plane flight. In the end I was not mentally tough enough that day. I think there is something to the theory that you can only put together so many mentally taxing efforts without recharging. I have seen this before in my running. I think it is possible that I left my PR race on the track a few weeks ago. There is just no question in my mind that my workouts point to me being in 15:30 shape. I mean, even if the weather conditions were ideal in CA a month ago, I had not done much speed work at that point. Since then, I have been really hammering the workouts on the track. This result basically tells me that whatever I had done before CA, which was more or less just a bunch of miles and tempo runs, had maxed out my VO2 max and that all these long interval workouts were doing me no good. In fact, they were hurting me, because I was losing the edge mentally. Peaking both physically and mentally is difficult and I apparently have much to learn in terms of how to approach this for the 5k. Then there is the mileage factor. Before CA I had about 3 wks of 70, because I had other races leading up to that one. Here I have been at 90+ until this past week and then brought it down to 67. Maybe with a couple of 60-70 mile weeks I'd be ready to go (?). We'll see. I think I'll take the next couple weeks around 70 and then run a road 5k and see where I am.
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