The Garmin gets a workout

As usual, I didn't get a lot of good-quality sleep last night. Dreamed of running and Garmins, and found myself looking at the clock too many times through the night. I eventually could stand it no longer and got up at about 5am for a leisurely preparation instead of the normal rushed one.

Not knowing the SMC setup, I registered and then went for a warm up jog, followed by a pit stop. When I emerged from the toilets, there was no one around, and a whole bunch of people were streaming off into the distance. Hey, I didn't know that the start was half a k away from registration! A rather too quick second warm-up got me to the start with a few seconds to spare.

I was hopeful, on the basis of previous 5k results, of keeping Johnny Dark in sight for most of the race. A few k in when he shot past the professor and FPT, I realised that that wasn't going to happen so I switched my sights onto the professor instead. I ran a fair bit of the first 10k with Seagull, and we just about caught the Prof and FPT at that point. Unfortunately, that point coincided with the hill (and an ugly hill it is too) of the Smithfield layout. I thought that I was OK on hills, but they all just left me for dead.

This is where I really not sure if I'm cut out to handle long distance. I don't think that I gave up, or anything as obvious as that, but the next 5 ks were a real struggle, and my pace dropped fairly clearly. Some jelly babies at the 15k turnaround helped, and although the pace didn't pick up much, at least I stopped feeling so lousy. At that turnaround, I noticed a couple of Woodstock runners who were catching me. Sure enough, I copped a red light at the transit way, and so we started the last couple of k together. Having run into that wind for so long by myself, I just tucked in behind them and let them drag me home.

So, what did I learn from today?

1. I finished in 100:45 (pb), 45 seconds slower than I was aiming for, and about 5 minutes slower than I had hoped. Ah, well....
2. I got a new 10k pb in the process (46:16), but seeing that I've never run either 10k or the half at my own pace, that's not surprising.
3. I averaged (!) a heart rate of 188 through the run. I know from previous experiments with TA's polar monitor that my maximum heart rate is much higher than the simple formula says it should be, but that was still surprising. I never got to a point where I was breathing too hard, so I don't think that it's a problem.
   
4. First half - good, second half - pretty ordinary. Was it mental, nutritional or physical? On the basis of training results, I'm guessing that it was the first and second rather than the third, but that's only a guess.

I wanted to do the race today to confirm my decision to do Canberra in April (a decision I took a few months ago). I changed my mind a thousand times during the run, but before the end I had settled on "Yes, I will do it; I will finish, and I will finish in under 3:50. Anything else is a bonus, and I will not carry any greater expectations than that". Seem reasonable?

sfG