Monday, March 4, 2013

Week 23 Summary and Chilly Half race report

688 TSS on 8 hrs.

Threshold bumps on both the bike and run this week from respective testing... the good news is that I'm getting fitter, bad news is that things are going to hurt more now.

Chilly Half
For the third year running, I picked up a cold, just in time for the race on Sunday. Unlike previous years, this wasn't in my chest, just a head cold and some sore throat annoyances.

My goal for this race had been to go sub-1:30, but with my cold, I was wavering on that. Going into the corral, I had been flirting with trying to run 4:20min/km for the first half, then picking up the pace to the end. Then I found myself just behind the 1:30 pace bunny, and thought, "hey, let's just go for it and see when I break."

The bunny was very quick after the first turn and the congestion cleared, I thought he was just trying to make up the time from the first slow part of the course, but no, he held a 4:50-4:10 pace through the first 15k, then slowed a little. This was good, I was starting to crack, and slowed to 4:20-4:25, though I had really stopped looking at my pace at that point, and was just trying to get to the finish without blowing up. The 1:30 bunny sped up again and dropped me in the last kilometre, I managed to hang on to go 1:30:16 (chip).

I had a lot of doubt during the race that I could hold on to the 1:30 pace and kept coercing myself to just go a little further (just make it to the turn around at 13.5k, just make it to 5k left, etc). I don't mind the pain, but I need to work on removing some doubt, I still feel like I'm going to blow up way earlier than it turns out I will...

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