Great race Maria. Congrats on the PR!

Everybody's different but back when I was trying to fun fast open 10ks, the way I solved the effort problem was:

1. I'd go out in the first mile at a pace I knew I couldn't hold for 10k. I would ignore all feedback until I crossed the Mile 1 point where I'd check my split.

2. Depending on that split and how I felt I'd back my pace off a little to something that I thought I'd have like a 20% chance of holding if I had a breakout day.

3. I'd try to hold that pace with everything I had.

4. If I started slipping, I switch to 2 minute on / 2 minute off intervals which I knew allowed me to hold overall pace longer than a constant effort. (I had my watch set to a two minute repeat timer before the race.)

I know most people advocate different pacing strategies but for me using this method gave me immediate faster times and I never finished thinking I hadn't given everything.

But I'm not saying this will work for anyone but me. In athletics I'm a bit of a head case and so I play head games with myself. For example, the fast first mile motivates me and gives me hope for a breakout run. Then, switching to the 2/2 intervals allows me to push harder knowing I get to rest in two mintues. Then during the rest interval, I feel like I'm messing up by slacking so I end up not resting much. The end result is that my overall mile pace ends up higher than if I just tried to hang onto a contant painful pace.

Thank you for the insight!  I love reading all the threads about people's 5K and 10K strategies!!! 

I've gotten into the habit of holding steady and use a pace alarm to tell me if I'm slowing down.  I'll have to test the interval theory and see how that works for me.  Another of our BTers did a run/walk test and found he was actually faster that way (early in training); so I should at least give intervals a try.

But for now, I need to figure out what strategy for a half marathon.  I was planning on finding the pace for my goal and just holdming onto it, but not sure.