Gorgeous day for a race with wonderful crowds and mostly nice course. I do wish they had mile markers every mile as I got confused several times. I forgot to start my watch so I was at the mercy of course markings. Now, this may be considered flat by some people but it’s not smutty nose flat. God that one bridge in particular felt a little masochistic the second time around.
I started the day with intestinal distress and light nausea and almost didn’t get in the car to go. Sitting my car before the race my HR was up to 72, up about 12. During the race my HR remained high and I started to get what I call excessive heart rate nausea followed by the predictable chills. Basically I was headed into stupidville over-reaching territory. I massively pulled my pace back from 9:00 to 11:00 for the last 3 miles and walked the last water stops and then walked 2 times in the last mile. Ended up averaging 9:30 for the race.
will say that the first 10K was pretty darn strong and my watch showed my pace in the 8:30 range. It is entirely possible that I PR’ed my 10K time but since I started my watch late I can’t prove it. I tried concentrating on the following Chi Running Focuses:
- Run tall (which is a combination focus)
- Push the air with your chest
- Relax lower body
- Swing arms to the back
After about mile 4 I realized I could not handle that many focuses and dropped the arm movement since I have particular difficulty juggling that and my lower body at the same time. Its too bad since the arm work massively increases my pace, perhaps as much as 30 seconds, but at the cost of heart rate.
This is the first race where I ran listening to a cadence metronome instead of music. I have it set to 180 steps a minute and it tick-tocks as I step. Eventually I should be able to drop some of the beats and just synchronize with every 3rd beat (like a waltz).
That’s the last race for me this year. Next one is 1st run, also in Lowell and then the Hampton half in February. Just going to be doing a lot of slow, untimed runs to build a better base and improve my conditioning. I am convinced. 8:00 pace is in my future some day, maybe a couple years, we’ll see.
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