Adarq.org

dude. that's so solid. 

Quote from: adarqui on January 28, 2018, 02:02:46 pm

Quote from: Joe on January 26, 2018, 10:12:33 am

26-01-18

Morning BW: 71.7kg [that consistency...]

Workout

Jog around, strides, some drills, and more jogging before race, about 1.5mi total

Race - 5k in 20:46.6 [unofficial, according to watch, shall see what the official record says this evening!] 
Splits - 4:15.0, 4:09.2, 4:20.0, 4:12.8, 3:49.6 [watch says the last split was .97km, but the course is licensed as/officially is 5k so I'll take the registry board's word here over my dumb watch]

Jog ~1.5 mi cooldown

Notes

Fuck yes. I was in the B group for people who estimated their finishing time at >22:00. I'd never raced before and my 6:31 mile from a couple of weeks ago led to my 5k time as being an estimated 22:07, so I went with that. Strategy was to just go out at something comfortable between 4:12-24/km [i.e. 21:xx pace]. About 15 people of >200 in the B group went out faster than me, but I'd overtaken about half of them by 1km.

After 2km there were just 5 ahead of me, as far as I could tell [i.e. unless someone was going like <19:30 pace or so]. At 2.5km the guy who had like a 50m lead after 1.5km really dropped off the pace and I snuck past him easily, so there were just two chaps ahead of me. They looked like they were having a hard time. After 2.5km my breathing started to get tougher but I was still fairly comfortable.

My strategy from 2.5km on was just to keep within 10m of the two guys running together who were leading the B group. This was not so tough and at about 3.95km I was within a couple of meters. I had started to breath pretty hard but I thought that with just 1km to go I could push a lot harder, so I blitzed past them. One of them was clearly struggling a lot more than the other. The chap who was doing better of the pair said "fuck, damn" as I passed -- I guess he thought he had the B group in the bag, haha. I pushed pace a little bit here. 4-4.5km pace began around 4:10 and I gradually pushed it to 4:00 flat. Then last minute, when I could see the finish line, I really pushed it. SPM climbed up to 210 and I hit a max pace of 2:44/km, but I probably averaged like 3:15/km or so for the last 45 seconds or so of the race. I wasn't sure where the race actually ended, to be honest. There was a narrow passage made w/ tape that you were funnelled through, and the beginning of it was marked with the 5km sign, so I assume that's where the race finished, but I didn't want to risk it so I kept pushing through to the end of that tunnel, and only hit my watch a couple of strides after it because I was too wiped to attend to that. Will be interesting to see what the official time is.

I was pretty pleased with the strategy. I'm pretty sure I won the B group because there was no one who was clearly in it ahead of me, though I'm not sure. If someone did beat me from the B group then they were seriously sandbagging hard, haha, but I guess I did too in the end, oops. But yeah, I had no concrete idea of what I could hit here beyond "probably 22:00 or so" so I was pretty pleased. I guess that I am probably already in shape to run a bit faster than this, given how much I evidently had left to push with on that last split. I mean if the last km is like 25 seconds faster than the average of the previous 4km then optimal pacing probably saves me some time, but w/e that was the first race. Sick.

Edit: apparently I maintained a sub 4:5x mile pace for the last 25 seconds or so of the race. Decent going after ~4.85k of racing.

Official result has me at 20:40, awesome.

great read and recap. seems like you executed this very well. solid pacing & kick! awesome work man.

when's your next race?

Glad you enjoyed it! Was pretty pleased.

The next one of these events isn't on a date I can do, so I might try the March one, which is like the 23rd since the 30th is Good Friday. So I'll get some more time to build aerobic strength and maybe gun it as a time trial aiming for sub-20:00. I'd be in amongst the main mass in the A race there, so there should always be someone for me to tail and push myself to keep up with, and I'd be used to the course properly, so I could probably hit a nice PR.