Monday, February 3, 2014

Trust Your Training - My First 10K

 I'd eaten my Cheerios and drank my glass of orange juice. I'd picked an outfit. I'd put in my training. I'd worried all week about weather conditions. And now, here I was: the frigid morning of February 2nd. Others were preparing for Super Bowl parties and I was nervously waiting to start my first 10K race.

When I run a 5K, I may not know what time I'll get, where I'll place, or whether it will be a good race or a bad race. But I know what it's going to take and I know what it's like to race 3 miles. I didn't know what it's like to race 6 miles. It could be way easier than I expected, or it could be much harder. It could fly by, or I could run out of steam midway through. I have run 6 miles and more in training, but only for long runs, when I intentionally take it easy. I'd never raced it. Could I do it?

I bounced around in the starting corral with the other runners, trying to keep warm. Please, please please pleeeeaaassee pace yourself, I begged myself for the umpteenth time in the past few weeks. DO NOT START TOO FAST!

I had learned my lesson from my last 5K and as I made my way across the starting line, I knew I couldn't let the initial first couple minutes of bottleneck bother me this time. It's ok, I told myself. Besides, everyone else here is impacted by it too.

I managed to hit a sweet spot with my pacing early on. I was working hard, but I hadn't pushed myself to my limit either. I was impressed when I passed the first mile marker and it said 8:37. Not bad! Even more good news was waiting for me at the 3 mile maker: if this were a 5K I would have beat my best time by a whole two minutes!

As I began seeing the faster runners pass me on the turnaround, and the runners behind me that I passed on turnarounds, it hit me: I could pull this off. I was running a good pace, there were still a ton of people behind me...it's very possible I actually COULD medal! So I pushed myself hard through the rest of the course, thinking about that medal, imagining it as mine to lose. I was still careful not to push too hard, but I knew I could NOT slow down. And I didn't. Adrenaline pumped me through those next two miles.

Then, around mile 5, I started to feel that clench in my stomach when I'm starting to run out of energy. No, I thought, no no no no no do NOT burn out now! You're so close! For most of the race, I had maintained a fairly isolated position in the crowd where very few people were running around me. I knew that at this point I wasn't going to catch up to anyone and the pack behind me probably wouldn't catch up to me, so I was able to relax a little bit. But I kept fighting through. As I rounded into the home stretch, I forgot about how tired I was and pushed myself to the finish line. The timer ticked on as I approached the mat: 53:26...27...28...29.....

I had run my first 10k in 53 MINUTES!! My boyfriend greeted me at the finish line and only then did I realize the sheer amount of energy I had used to race those 6 miles. I could barely speak!

Well, that was that. It was over. I felt great. 53 minutes was an awesome time and no matter what, I was confident I hadn't placed last in my age group (my fear going into this). I stepped up to the receipt reader to get my official results and when the woman handed it to me, she said, "Congratulations!"

...oh my god. That means...that means....I had done it?!?

I snatched up my receipt and looked for my age group results. Sure enough: 6th place!!! I had done it!! I had earned my first race medal!! And I had done it in my first ever 10K, at that! I had beaten women in my age group who have run multiple 10Ks before. I couldn't believe it!

This frigid February day had just become the highlight of my running career so far.


My first medal!

Usually it's only bad experiences that have clear "take-aways". We are accustomed to having to learn from our bad experiences because that's how we make sense of them, and we just take the good experiences and run with them. Despite how well this race went, I still learned one very important thing: trust in your training.

I was able to run those 6.2 miles and keep a good pace because of all that training I put in. Even though I had never raced 6.2 miles before, or even run it very fast, all the training I did helped. It all meant something.

Doing the majority of my running outside, including long runs and tempo runs, even when it's bitterly cold, and dark, and slushy and snowy and miserable, has made me a tougher competitor and prepared me to run even in the most dreadful conditions. Although those runs can be miserable, I'm secretly glad that this season came at this point in my training. When my bigger races come up later this year, in more ideal weather, I will have already faced down most of the worst possible conditions to run in.

Even though they are shorter runs, doing speed work on the treadmill has helped too. It has made me push myself and test the limits of how long I can run at really fast speeds.

Trust your training. In between races it begins to feel stagnant, and it's frustrating that you can't quite get it to where you feel you should be for a race. But it's working. All of it counts. All of it makes the race performance possible. Trust your training, and trust the race day adrenaline. A good race will show you what you are really capable of, but you can't get there without training. Always do your best in training, knowing that it will pay off even if it doesn't seem like it will.

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