Today I returned to racing on a wet and rainy Labor Day. My wife had some insomnia last night so I ended up waking up at 4:30 and never going back to sleep (it's hard to sleep when someone is watching "The Shining"!). I was reading the news on the internet and relaxing when I heard the sound of very loud and hard rain! I hadn't checked the weather in a few days so I wasn't expecting rain. Luckily it slowed down by the 7:30 start; it lightly rained about half the race and then stopped for the other half.
My legs felt pretty heavy and slow during a lot of the race. I think that might be because I didn't train at all last week; I took an unprecedented seven day break from racewalking. But I still had pretty decent times, a negative split and a PR. I had one really slow mile in the middle (mile 6) but that was mostly due to slowing down at an aid station and adjusting one of my safety pins that was starting to rub uncomfortably. My splits were: 10:22, 10:22, 10:22, 10:09, 10:12, 10:34, 10:11, 10:15, 10:15, 3:12. My previous PR was 1:38:20 (10:33 pace) so I trimmed almost three minutes off my previous best and 18 seconds per mile off the pace. I think if we had had dry weather I could have done even better.
Distance: 15 kilometers
Time: 1:35:37
Pace: 10:15/mile
I'm planning to race in a 5k next weekend (9/11, the Freedom Run). I'm hoping to set a PR but since I haven't been doing any speedwork that may not be possible. I thought I could go faster today but never got below 10:09/mile, so I may not be able to push the pace below my current 5k PR of 10:08. I am planning to do some speedwork on Wednesday so maybe that will remind my legs what it feels like to go fast!
Happy Labor Day and happy racing/training to all the other bloggers out there.
