Yeah, you got speed-freak jive

9 weeks to go until STWM.

Sunday August 14th Acura 10 miler: 1st place, 48:34

I was pleased with the 10 miler yesterday at the Distillery District in Toronto, which was my third race in the Canadian Running Series this year.  As happy as I am with my performance I can’t help but compare my time to last year when I ran 9 seconds faster.

I think there are four reasons that contributed to not running faster.

It was more humid this year than last year which was weird because before the race I believed the conditions were better because it didn’t feel too hot with cloud cover.  But once we got going it was quite muggy.

Last year I set out to run 3:00/km and with limited competition I was able to keep my pace even, in fact my 5 mile splits were 24:12/24:13.  This year the guys were racing the first 7km and our pace dipped down to 2:57/km at times.  My two 5 mile splits were 24:06/24:28 yesterday, ugly.

This reason is weak but, I have been running more mileage so far in my build-up so I may not have been quite as sharp.  Going into Acura I did the same workout as last year on the Thursday but my overall weekly mileage was 30km more this year.  I also wasn’t sick three weeks out like I was this year.

The main reason I didn’t run faster than last year is that I simply didn’t push after 13km (13km split 39:02).  I let myself back-off a little bit and my pace slowed down ~4 seconds/km, which adds up quickly!

Overall it was fun to race and good to break the training routine where I try to, ever so slightly, push down my threshold pace and feel comfortable at marathon effort.  This week is going to be a big mileage week with a long run towards the end of the week.

It also felt really good to shave last night!

RESULTS

I like how they have the 5 mile split.  Seems as though fading was the trend amongst the top 10.

    1   48:33.8  3:02    COOLSAET, Reid        Hamilton       24:05.5   24:28.4
    2   49:01.0  3:03    GILLIS, Eric          Guelph         24:06.0   24:55.0
    3   49:26.5  3:05    LOISELLE, Matt        Toronto        24:05.4   25:21.1
    4   50:22.4  3:08    MACHARIA, Giitah      Oakville       24:31.6   25:50.9
    5   50:24.1  3:08    KARANJA, David        Hamilton       24:32.4   25:51.7
    6   51:09.6  3:11    CHIASSON, Rejean      Toronto        25:17.4   25:52.3
    7   52:27.2  3:16    ONGERI, Josephat      Hamilton       24:58.8   27:28.5
    8   52:29.5  3:16    CAMPANELLI, Joe       Etobicoke      25:55.2   26:34.4
    9   52:33.6  3:16    THORSON, Cleve        Guelph         25:50.9   26:42.7
   10   53:18.1  3:19    MASON, John           Drumbo         25:38.8   27:39.4