Standing in the crowd of people after my race Saturday, waiting to see the results, I overheard someone say “If I’d been 15 seconds faster I would have won a medal”. I’ve had similar thoughts many times over the past two years. That’s why we race: to see who is faster today, under these conditions. Unfortunately for him Saturday wasn’t his day.
That said, it was a pretty good day for me. I had a target time, and beat it by 1 second. Unfortunately for me, someone else had a better day. At first glance I thought he beat me by 20 seconds. I remembered seeing someone about that far in front of me that could have been my age, and knowing that I couldn’t catch him. There really wasn’t anything I could have done to run faster.
At second glance I realized my mistake. He hadn’t beaten me by 20 seconds, he’d beaten me by 1:20. That actually made it much easier to swallow. Even if I’d had a much better day I couldn’t have run 80 seconds faster.
Saturday my best was a respectable 2nd place, and my first medal ever! I would have been much more excited about a 1st place, instead I will focus on my time and be pleased with that. I’m pleased because I didn’t get to approach this as a real race. If I had, I wouldn’t have run almost 30 miles in the days leading up to the race!
It also didn’t help that it was really cold outside, 19 when I got out of my car! I tried to warm up like coach wanted, but my legs felt like mush and even 8:30 pace got me short of breath. Once the race started, I couldn’t hold a 7 minute/mile, and that was supposed to be my minimum pace. I fought this for the first mile, sucking wind and irritated that my pace was much slower than I’d planned. It was then that I decided to forget my watch and just run as fast as I could.
The course was fairly technical, with a lot of u-turns and sharp turns that made it difficult to hold pace. There were also several patches of ice which made me nervous at every turn. I stole a glance at my watch once in the last couple of miles, pleased that my pace was under 7:00. I only looked once though. I think I was running too fast for me to feel comfortable looking at my watch!
I’d run about as fast as I could, and then held on for the finish. I’m pleased with how it ended up. I’m not a big fan of the 5K, it is too short and too fast for my skills, but it was a good day.
Yes, someone beat me, but he didn’t win my medal, he won his own!
No comments:
Post a Comment