I dug deep and found a PR

Posted July 16, 2011 at 1:42 pm | Tags: 5 miler, goals, lessons learned, Lynchburg, Percival's Island, races | 32487 Comments »http%3A%2F%2Fwww.runningbecauseican.com%2Fi-dug-deep-and-found-a-pr%2FI+dug+deep+and+found+a+PR2011-07-16+17%3A42%3A23David+H.http%3A%2F%2Fwww.runningbecauseican.com%2F%3Fp%3D3248

My wife caught this awesome photo of the James River in Lynchburg from the first bridge we cross in the race.

You know those moments where you plan something and it plays out perfectly? Well, that didn’t happen today. For one of the first races ever, I set a very specific goal for today’s Percival’s Island 5 Miler in Lynchburg. I even went as far as writing on my wrist where I needed to be each mile to hit 36:54.

7:22 pace would have put me at 36:54 (yes, that's a 4, not a 9)

My time today was 36:47. That’s right, 7 seconds faster than my goal. It was also 12 seconds better than my PR in this race from 4 years ago, and it was nearly 3 minutes faster than last year.

The best laid plans of running a consistent, even-paced race — hitting about 7:22 each mile — just didn’t happen. Not that it’s a problem, but it turned this into a race in which I dug deep both physically and mentally in the second half to make up time after losing precious seconds in the first couple of miles.

I got caught up in a little more traffic than I usually do in the first mile and hit it in 7:28. I hit mile 2 in 7:25. That put me about 10 seconds off where I wanted to be.

When I hit the halfway point and the clock read 19 something, I had a decision to make — lay off the gas pedal a bit and still have a solid race, but accept missing my goal, or … well … let’s just say I wasn’t going to play the mental game today. I picked my ass up and went for it.

Through mile 3 and 4 I was able to get my pace down a bit, but I still had some work to do. When I hit mile 4, the clock was right at 29:59 — I still had to do a 7-minute mile just to tie my time from 4 years ago. It was shut up and go time.

At that same moment, I passed a couple of people who had just passed me; then a quarter mile later a guy passed me; I stuck with him and we passed a guy on a bridge who told us we were looking strong; the guy we passed on the bridge passed me with a tenth of a mile to go and said “Come on”; I passed that guy 3 feet from the finish line; the other guy was just in front of me.

This is near the finish line; I'm in blue. Somehow I dug deep and passed that guy at the end.

Instead of thinking about what I was doing, it was some very friendly competition in the last half mile that led to a sub-7 minute mile and a PR.

In the end, I learned a lot today:

• For these community races I need to get closer to the front — I was 42nd out of 225 people. There’s no reason for me anymore not to start a little closer to the front than I do.
• Writing the splits on my wrist is a huge help in keeping focused. I don’t know how many races I’ve done in which I tried to do math in my head to hit certain times, but I felt more at ease mentally today. I will definitely have more specific goals for future races.
• Keeping my arms lower continues to help keep me relaxed when pushing it. I heard someone at the end telling runners to “work your arms; finish strong.” While I probably did use my arms at the end to push myself, that technique is not for me for a flat race anymore. For hills, yeah, you need to use your arms, but I had a lot of energy left at the end because I didn’t waste any with big arm movement the first 4 miles.
• When the weather cooperates, push it harder. Today’s temperature at the start was in the mid-60s, about 20 degrees cooler than at the same time for much of the first half of the week. We had highs in the mid-90s to near 100 until Thursday, and those temperatures are coming back, so I felt like I had a small window today to push things even harder than I usually would.
• Compression calf sleeves are great for recovering. I’ll write a full review later, but my legs do not feel like they ran a hard 5 miles this morning.

Today’s race also caps off the first quarter of marathon training. I couldn’t have asked for a better start with some strong runs, steady long runs and two race PRs.