Sunday, July 13, 2008

10k TW race - report

so today was back to racing flats!

first my congratulation to fellow italian, friend and reader Stefano who did a fantastic race, establishing a new course record and beating really the best runners around here. Running 33'15" in such heat leaves me at disbelief of his potential (he is also a "fresh" runner).

At the unusual start time of 5.30pm, the weather was as good as you can hope in this part of the year: 26C/80F and 95% Humidity (it rained all day, stopped just 1 hour before the race).

we started fast .. much faster than any of my expectation ... a first km in 3'20"saw me back in 10th place with already 10/15 seconds gap with the first !!
for my current fitness, I really did a good race: I run very steady pace, sticking until 500m from the end to the back of another runner. After the 2nd Km, we set on a 3'30" pace and picked up runners little by little until crawling back to 4th and 5th place.
I hate running in the afternoon because I always have digestive problems and today was no exception. luckily 3-4 burps along the way did hel me out of the unconfortable feeling.
I was ok with breathing and the general feeling, but the legs were not used anymore to run fast, so I felt a bit like "powerful engine, but can not transfer power to the ground".

At the end I closed in 35'02" (5th place), that is astonishingly much better than the 36'40" of 2007 in the same race.
This time is also a further demonstration that is not really related how fast you go in training and the race results... in the past months I never trained faster than MP pace, never did any speedwork, but just did solid mileage base. If you have a good base, good racing comes by itself.
Overall I feel much ahead of my planned fitness because such a good time (for me...) at 26C/95% so early in the season means I am really in the right direction

6 comments:

MB said...

Nice race, congratulations, sounds like your heading in the right direction.

Sling Runner said...

by7,

I believe 11 July is the closing date for local runners. I asked the organizer and they said the deadline is 16 July.

I suggest you contact the organizer if you'd like to enter.

special1@joongang.co.kr

RICK'S RUNNING said...

i had a similar experience to you last winter after some very good ARTHUR LYDIARD base training[ 10hours per week] i ran some great races without any interval training, just some leg speed work, once per week!
we sometime think of interval training as the most important part of our training, truth its just a small piece of the bigger jigsaw!

Simone said...

well done, 35' with that heat and humidity sounds a very good time!!!

Simone said...

well done, 35' with that heat and humidity sounds a very good time .. and with no specific speed work.

ps: I think speed work is not all, but even in marathons helps to improve. Anyhow for non professionals the best training is the one that fits better in our daily schedule keeping us injury free, all the rest is extra :)

by7 said...

I am not "against" speedwork, but I found that you really do not need that much speedwork to get into the peak shape and improve fastly.
On the contrary, using speedwork all year round just create a quick improvement but reaching very fast a plateau.
I plan to introduce speedwork in my plan from August, in order to get in the best possible shape on November 2nd !!