Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Mission accomplished!

The TC10K went extremely well...it was actually unexpected that I get a PR in this very popular (and populous) race. After all, the day before I went for a quite difficult and fast bike ride around Land's End, 3h30mins for a total distance of 100km! My legs were Jell-O that night. I did not sleep very well, woke-up early and did not feel that well at the start line. My warm-up session that morning was tough and I decided to cut it short.

I positionned myself right on the 40-49 minutes line with many people (some of them did not belong there) and I just told myself that this would be a training race, I did not need to go fast...I just needed to go hard. So I did!

On my Polar RS800 I had my pace and my heart rate displayed, I could not see the time. 3-2-1...I started to run, dodging those who did not belong there and started running fast....my pace was 3min50 sec / km! I told myself that this was too fast, maybe I needed to slow down a bit, I did not want to burn out before the end (it happened to me last year at the Cobble Hill 10K). I tried to slow down....I look at my pace....3min 52sec / km...and it felt good! I decided to go ahead and not get bothered by my pace...1k past, then 2, then 3....by km 7 I was still passing people (some of them huffing and puffing)...my heart rate was through the roof (over 90% of my max - which is 192 BPM)! I kept running at the highest speed I could sustain, the finish line was not too far after all.....

41minutes 18 seconds....a personnal record! I am happy....very happy! Now I am shooting for a sub 40....wish me luck!

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