Sunday, November 25, 2007

Abbey Dasy - Take 3

I can't believe that I've managed to run the same race three years in a row. That I've been running for long enough to have run the same race three years in a row. And that I've got faster each time.

The first year I was ecstatic to get under an hour (59:19). The second year I was just about getting my legs sorted after Berlin and Amsterdam half and was nowhere near my PB (52:04, against a PB of 47:47). This year I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

I've found it quite difficult to recover from doing back to back marathons. It wasn't so bad recovering from the first to do the second, but the second took a lot more out of me. It was a similar story to last year when I did Amsterdam half perhaps too soon after Berlin. I wanted to get under 50 minutes so that I could say that none of my 10ks this year were over 50 minutes (after two close shaves in summer - 49:55 and 49:50, when I was recovering from Edinburgh). My PB has gone down a bit this year, but is still in the 47s. Realistically, I thought I'd probably be looking at 49:30 or thereabouts, I've put a bit of weight on since Amsterdam, and I've not really found my running mojo.

Hence I started at the back of the 50 minutes or under group. I should remember when doing that that if I'm realistic about my finish time, it doesn't mean that everyone else will be, and I basically spent the whole race overtaking. It was quite good starting with slightly slower runners as it meant that I didn't hare off, but after 2k I realised that I was definitely in sub:50 form, so tried to pick the pace up a bit as I didn't feel like I was working as hard as I could be.

The route has changed a bit this year from the previous two years, but it's just the start and a bit in the middle. You still get to see everyone coming back as you head out. Particularly if you start far enough back that the leaders are at the 1k mark by the time you cross the start line.

I had some cheerleaders at 4.5k/5.5k. They were actually one of the main reasons I dragged myself out of bed to run, because they'd told me they'd made signs and I wanted to see them! They weren't just cheering me, by the way, but did have signs with my name on it which was nice, and a first for me.

I'm starting to find that 10ks are a different challenge to what they used to be. The distance doesn't bother me at all. The first time I had to grit my teeth just to make sure I was still running by the finish, and last summer I was still taking walk breaks from time to time. Now I know that I can do the distance fairly easily, the challenge is making sure I keep the pace up, and don't let myself slack off. If I lose concentration I can start to slow down a bit, so I have to keep spotting targets to overtake. But starting where I did, I found that there were plenty of those and overtook far more people than overtook me.

I got to the turn in 24:27 so I knew that sub 50 was on if I kept running at that pace. Then, something rare for me happened. I actually managed to pull a negative split out of the bag. Maybe I have before, I don't always take my time at the half way mark, but I did the second half in 23:35, for a total time of 48:12.

That was a lot closer to my PB than I'd been expected, and for a crowded race where I had to weave around quite a bit, I was quite pleased with that. Not a PB, but a good post-marathon run out.

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