Penn State's mentor group - CLOSED! (Page 67)

zionvier - 2010-06-07 12:49 AM Thanks everyone.  I have pretty mixed feelings about the race.  On one hand it would have been awesome to BQ at the race, but I knew it was going to be pushing the absolute limit on my ability.  I had decided to push as hard as I could and see what would happen because I'd kick myself if I finished with fuel left and didn't BQ, always wondering 'what-if'.

 

zionvier - 2010-06-07 12:49 AM Thanks everyone.  I have pretty mixed feelings about the race.  On one hand it would have been awesome to BQ at the race, but I knew it was going to be pushing the absolute limit on my ability.  I had decided to push as hard as I could and see what would happen because I'd kick myself if I finished with fuel left and didn't BQ, always wondering 'what-if'.

 

zionvier - 2010-06-07 12:49 AM Thanks everyone.  I have pretty mixed feelings about the race.  On one hand it would have been awesome to BQ at the race, but I knew it was going to be pushing the absolute limit on my ability.  I had decided to push as hard as I could and see what would happen because I'd kick myself if I finished with fuel left and didn't BQ, always wondering 'what-if'.

On the other hand I really can be disappointed at all with the performance.  As you guys saw, I was really moving during that first half.  Set a new half marathon PR in that first half by about 4 minutes.  Also posted a 20:15 5k time based on the garmin somewhere around miles 6-9, which is my best 5k since high school.  I realized the half mary time was WAY too fast though considering I was aiming for nearly 2 minutes slower at that point.  So I backed the pace off and tried to let myself recover, knowing I had banked a lot of time and didn't need to maintain 7:15s, I tried to back it off to 7:25-7:30s, but by mile 20 I knew I was in for it.  The pace at mile 20 would have been enough if I could maintain it, I had dropped off to around 8:00 pace, which would be just fast enough to BQ if I could hold it, but then around mile 22 I died.  All of the sudden I find myself doing 10:30s and 'pushing hard' barely took me to 10:15s.  Sometime around the 23mile mark I calculated that I'd need to do around a 19minute 5k in order to BQ.  I was hitting an 11:30 pace by then... there was no way in heck I was going to be able to drop to the 6:00 pace that would be required.  At that point I knew it was over, I had been in survival mode for a while at that point and just put my head down, took one step at a time and vowed to just keep on moving forward.  My exposer to the ultra community kind of helped out with this, where I kept telling myself I'm still not as bad off as I was during mile 45 of my ultra.  Head down, one off in front of the other and just keep going.  Managed to get myself back towards a 10:45 pace.

I still managed to set a mary PR, but I'm basically a waddling useless heap right now.

Thanks again for the support.  I'm surprisingly very happy with my performance and think I've learned some things about what to work on and maybe what IMAZ will feel like towards the end. 

PennState - 2010-06-07 10:51 AM I think the next discussion we should have is about pacing longer events. There are some neat calculators and also some real world things that can help pacing marathons, and HIM and beyond triathlons. Sound like a good discussion?

PennState - 2010-06-07 5:38 PM

what was your first career of running?

calimavs - 2010-06-08 12:41 AM Hi all - just popping in here real quick before bed.

I won't be around the rest of the week - heading to DC for a conference for work. I got my schedule for while I am there and it looks like I'll be working basically non-stop from 7am-8pm each day. Will make for a challenging week from a training perspective. I've never been to DC so I'm planning a run around all the touristy sights really early Wednesday morning and I figure I can train AND sightsee at the same time.

Have a good week training everyone!

PennState - 2010-06-08 10:44 AM Anyone have any thoughts on pacing or any other topics you want to discuss?

PennState - 2010-06-08 12:44 PM Anyone have any thoughts on pacing or any other topics you want to discuss?

JoshKaptur - 2010-06-08 2:37 PM


I don't have time for a full treatise on pacing (although I have lots of thoughts) right now, but I will say this:

I think many times people err too much on the side of caution and don't go out fast enough.  A race should hurt, if you're really racing, by the end.  And many people are surprised to learn just how long you can make it hurt and still keep going if you are mentally tough enough.

I was reluctant to post that because I think the danger of going out too easy is pretty low in long course tri... however I do think that regardless of how well your pacing has gone, there are a lot of people walking who are not but could, if they just wanted to badly enough, be running.  Just look at how many people sprint the last 1/4 mile after walking the previous 6.

One of my goals for LP is to not stop running, no matter what.

PennState - 2010-06-08 8:12 PM OK, got my last hard ride (although it was more Z3 than really hard) in before Eagleman 70.3 this weekend. Anyone else training today?