10k predictor

Memorial Day morning I'll be in the San Francisco Bay Area running my first race since my cross country debut disaster in February.  In fact, aside from that race, I haven't really raced in about 6 months.  My typical pre-race mental gyrations seem to be amplified this time around probably because it has been so long since I raced or maybe because the last one was such a disaster.  For the last two weeks, I've spent a fair amount of energy trying to divine an appropriate 10k race goal.

I realize that it doesn't really matter much what I think I can run.  I'll run what I'm able to run and it will either be super painful because I went out faster than my body could handle or it will just be painful because the 10k is a painful distance for me.  I get this, but I like to torture myself anyway.

I've been trying to keep my expectations low for this race even though my workouts have been going surprisingly well.  After all, I only have 6 weeks of running training under my belt at this point and had one down week (=lower mileage) in there when my achilles acted up again.  My fitness level has rebounded nicely though.  I haven't done any true race predictor workouts, but I've done a few that give me an inkling of the pace I might be able to maintain.    

What has been really confusing is that my effort-based paces all seem to be about the same.  In the last 2 weeks, I've run a 10k effort workout at 6:00 pace, a half marathon effort workout at 6:07 pace and a lactate threshold effort workout at 6:04 pace, and they've all felt like the right effort level.  My coach expects that I'm getting slightly more fit each week, so that explains some of this, but it sure makes predicting my 10k race goal hard.

Here's what I have to work with.  I blogged about my workout a couple of weeks ago where I ran 10k effort mile repeats + 5k effort 400s around the track with the miles just under 6:00 pace and the 5k effort at around 5:40 pace.  Last weekend, I did a 16 mile long run with 4 x 10 minutes at lactate threshold effort with 2 minute jog rests.  I averaged 6:04 pace for the 40 minutes and felt great.

Tuesday of this week, I was back on the track for a fun workout that started with 15 minutes at marathon effort (6:18 pace), 15 minutes of jogging to the track and 16 x 400m at 5k effort with 1 minute jog rests.  I was a little nervous about this workout because I haven't done that many 400s in a long, long time and I knew that 1 minute rests would feel pretty short as I got into the later repeats.  I had company for this workout, which was fantastic.  I started off with 82 second 400s and immediately questioned whether I could hold that pace for 15 more circles of the track.  I did.  My splits were:

82
83
82
82
83
82
82
82
82
80
83
83
82
83
82
81

That averages out to somewhere around 5:30 pace for the group.  I felt great during and after this workout.  The last lap was hard, but doable and I left the track feeling like I could have done a few more repeats.

I want to believe that these workouts indicate I could come to close to my PR on Monday (37:23, ~6:02 pace).  The little devil on my shoulder says that I'm high to think that I can hold that pace given my last race performance and the short amount of time I've been back into training.  I think a reasonable goal is to shoot for something in the range of 6:00-6:05 pace and just hope to see a 37:XX on the clock when I cross.  I think breaking 38:00 right now would be wonderful.

Look for my race report on Monday.  Happy Memorial Day everyone!

Oh, and if you haven't checked out JT's latest project featuring….ME…you should take a look at the Houston Hopefuls website.  Check back regularly as she interviews other masters women trying to qualify for the Olympic Trials.  Should be a great series.