Eisenhower 4 Mile Recap

It's so strange that when I think I'm not prepared to do well in a race, I surprise myself. 
Having not run strong in Florida, and running only twice since then without doing very much speed work or even easy distance, I relied on sitting down with Runmeter last night and planned my splits and what pace I wanted to do for each mile. I thought that if I did the calculations, and I stuck close to them, I would be victorious in running a PR for 4 miles. Since my best 4 mile time was 34:52, I thought coming in anywhere during 33 minutes would be reasonable. I also planned for negatives.

                  Plan               Actual
Mile1         9:00                7:52
Mile2         8:30                8:27 
Mile3         8:15                8:46
Mile4         8:00                8:14

Close, but no cigar. Starting out too fast has always been an issue for me. Runmeter lady was telling me to slow down for the first 2 miles, and to 'speed your damn ass up' the last 2 miles. But - dear, virtual sentinel, how could I do that when I went out too fast?

So, the positives..
I was fighting nausea and the urge to walk. That's something I'm happy about this race, I did not walk once! I ALMOST stopped to walk, but kept moving until the wrenching in my gut dissipated, then picked up the pace again. I think I did that 2 or 3 times, probably during mile 3.

It's cool that I planned for 33:45 and came in 33:47 - but, again, not feeling in control of my pace is unsettling. It is getting somewhat better since I began running, so I can only hope that it will continue to improve the more I practice.

There was a nice turnout. There was some construction going on, so we were diverted off the pavement and onto grass for about the length of 2 baseball fields, I think. There were MANY turns. I tried my best to run the tangents. I think I did fairly well, because Magellan says I came in at 3.9 miles, and Runmeter said I ran 4.03. So, even though there were so many turns, I think I spared myself running the potential extra distance. 

As a matter of fact, I heard one of the course monitors say to me.. "ahh.. taking the shortcut, I see.." Which kind of put me off at first -I thought that was the correct way to run a course like this because race officials measure courses with tangents. Am I wrong?
I don't think I did anything wrong.

I also thought I heard someone say,"Looking strong, PP"-- or something to that effect. I could have been delirious, who knows.  

One of my Facebook friends commented through Runmeter with a simple word.. "donut" - about 2 minutes into the race, when everything was quiet, and people were concentrating while jockeying for position. You know the atmosphere.. I snorted a partial guffaw which made someone turn around to look.  A little embarrassing, but amusing none the less. It was a subtle reminder to me to keep it light and relaxed, despite the way I felt about how I might finish.

It was mid 50's with a light, steady breeze. I dressed good to start, a little too warm for the end.

A rare self photo, but I'm happy to PR!

Next week is the Long Island Marathon with 1/2 and 10k races. I'll be doing the 10k. Time to beat: 00:58:18 from Cow Harbor last year.
Right now I'm confident I can PR, but I should not count my chickens.
Because of all the racing I've been doing, I've not been able to get any LSR's in. I'm going to try not to register for anything after next weekend.


00:33:47 (PR)  8:27 pace
7/20 Age group
71/226 Overall

It felt good to be on the second page of the results list!


Magellan Data
Runmeter Data