A Balance-Happy New Year

Single: SLTC 15K. I started the day a little sluggish. When I got home yesterday I realized that do to the “stuff” I was dealing with at work I completely forgot to eat lunch. Also, I didn’t sleep well. I was in bed for 8-hrs but… All that being said I started out the day right. I met a new blogger Fiddy (James Moore), I gave him a ride to and from the race and really enjoyed our conversations throughout the time. We got to the race with plenty of time to warm-up. We did an FRB warmup with a good number of people ~3-miles at 8:22 pace. Then to the race. I spoke with James and Albert about going out at 5:40s and both sounded interested (at least until the gun went off). I stuck to plan and watched them go out at about 5:20. I hit mile 1 in 5:39, I was on my own the entire race and not feeling 100%. I was having to work a lot harder today to keep -5:40 pace than I had to keep 5:30 the race before… Miles two and three were both in 5:41. The turnaround was a rude awakening for me, there was a minor headwind but with how I was feeling it didn’t help in the motivation department. At about mile 4 I started to reel back in James but was not feeling “it” 5:37 (fastest of the race). Mile 5 was 5:38 from there on out things just didn’t work for me. I felt fine I just couldn’t convince my legs of that. Miles 6 and 7 were 5:45 and 5:49, yuck. My initial plan was to “take it easy” at 5:40 pace through mile 7 and then pour it on. However, my legs didn’t get that memo. Mile 7 was the slowest but the last two were not that much better,  5:42 and 5:46 with a 1:54 for the last 0.34. The good news is that despite not being there mentally or really feeling like I was racing today I still managed a 15K PR. The fact that this is only the second 15K I’ve run may have had something to do with that. But in all reality I’ve very happy with the time. With all the complaints I could add about the week I still managed to run 5:42 pace HR 182. Considering I was shooting for 5:40 pace I’m happy with it. The “funny” part is that I took the exact same place as my last 15K 2^nd age 7^th o.a. After the race there was a FRB-team plus cool-down of ~6 miles. The second half I ran with James. Avg. 8:15 HR 138. I then had to go into work to make up some missed time. Total for the day 19. Mi: 10-D1