![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
first race of the cycle!
Sep. 12th, 2013 11:06 amThis Saturday will be my first race of the training cycle - my first race since my half marathon six months ago! I'm a little nervous, because it's an entirely new course to me, and a distance I haven't raced in nearly two years; but I do love racing, and I'm excited to see how I do.
There is no way I'm going to beat or even match my PR of 43:06 from the Winter Sun 10K nearly two years ago, as that was set on a significantly downhill course at about 2500 ft lower elevation than here (race report). But I think I'm in better shape now that I was then. A week before that race I ran a 6x half mile workout with 2 minute recoveries, targeting 7:10-7:15 pace for the first 4 reps, then letting myself go - I ran the 5th at 7 minute pace even, and then blew up on the last with a 7:31.
I did the same workout on Tuesday, targeting 6:55 pace, and averaged 6:51, no blowups. My heart rate was considerably lower, too, both for the speed intervals and for the recoveries - in fact, my recoveries before the older race were at higher HR than my average HR during the intervals on Tuesday! But I'm not sure how the HR translates, because all of my HR values have been lower lately; does this mean I'm not working as hard, or that my working HR range has shifted lower?
So, what am I looking at? The Runworks calculator has a hills-equivalent calculator, and when I feed in the data from my Winter Sun PR (58 ft of uphills and 375 ft of downhills, as calculated by SportTracks' elevation correction plugin) it tells me that the equivalent time on a flat course would be 44:01, and with some modest total uphills and downhills - say, 60 ft total up and down - 44:13. Then I plug that number back in and ask for the conversion from 4300 ft to 7000 ft, which gives me 44:59.
So, that's my goal: under 45 minutes. (The more under 45 minutes, the better, of course.) Which incidentally would be much faster than my last 10K at this elevation, 47:22 at the Fem 10 in 2010. That would be a pace of about 7:14, which is a bit faster than my tempo runs have been, and my longest tempo run has been four miles; six miles at a faster pace will be tough! But if race-day magic works, I might be able to pull it off. We shall see!
There is no way I'm going to beat or even match my PR of 43:06 from the Winter Sun 10K nearly two years ago, as that was set on a significantly downhill course at about 2500 ft lower elevation than here (race report). But I think I'm in better shape now that I was then. A week before that race I ran a 6x half mile workout with 2 minute recoveries, targeting 7:10-7:15 pace for the first 4 reps, then letting myself go - I ran the 5th at 7 minute pace even, and then blew up on the last with a 7:31.
I did the same workout on Tuesday, targeting 6:55 pace, and averaged 6:51, no blowups. My heart rate was considerably lower, too, both for the speed intervals and for the recoveries - in fact, my recoveries before the older race were at higher HR than my average HR during the intervals on Tuesday! But I'm not sure how the HR translates, because all of my HR values have been lower lately; does this mean I'm not working as hard, or that my working HR range has shifted lower?
So, what am I looking at? The Runworks calculator has a hills-equivalent calculator, and when I feed in the data from my Winter Sun PR (58 ft of uphills and 375 ft of downhills, as calculated by SportTracks' elevation correction plugin) it tells me that the equivalent time on a flat course would be 44:01, and with some modest total uphills and downhills - say, 60 ft total up and down - 44:13. Then I plug that number back in and ask for the conversion from 4300 ft to 7000 ft, which gives me 44:59.
So, that's my goal: under 45 minutes. (The more under 45 minutes, the better, of course.) Which incidentally would be much faster than my last 10K at this elevation, 47:22 at the Fem 10 in 2010. That would be a pace of about 7:14, which is a bit faster than my tempo runs have been, and my longest tempo run has been four miles; six miles at a faster pace will be tough! But if race-day magic works, I might be able to pull it off. We shall see!