And then my critical power changed!

 I logged into the Stryd Powercenter yesterday after my long run to update my run with my thoughts and I noticed that my critical power, CP, had dropped.  It went from 322 to 312 (Stryd has a few bugs in their little graphs...they say it went from 325 to 312 but it was really 322!).  Which caused me to pause for a minute.  I should have known with running more on the treadmill and not doing any long hard runs that it would drop.  But after pausing for a moment I got it back together and told myself that I'd run what I had planned on running this next Saturday.  

The race plan.  The Stryd race calculator says that I should race a 5K at about 319 watts and that will put me somewhere in at 27:37 which will not be lower than my summer 5K.  This might be subject to change but I think what I'll do it set my watch to run between 320 and 340 (Coros watches only do 10 watt increments).  My runs in the 330 area have felt really good.  I don't want to say easy because that hasn't been the case but they haven't really taxed me yet.  I have a workout tomorrow, six times 2 minutes with a minute rest to solidify the work that was done last week that will help me determine if I should go with that power for my race.  The race course is an out and back course.  I've been told that the out portion is slightly down hill with usually a tail wind and then the way back is the opposite of that.  So that might come into play a bit but with power I'll still be in that zone.  Here are the couple of goals I have for this race.  

A Goal - Sub 26:30 (according to the Stryd race calculator 331 would be me at 26:39)

B Goal - Sub 27 (given the new power getting under 27 would be awesome but I think really doable)

C Goal - Sub 27:10 (this was the 5K race time I had in July)

Maybe these goals are to small of a jump but as I mentioned in my trail race recap racing can be a mind fuck and I want to come out of this race feeling good and proud of what I've done. So setting expectations accordingly should help with that.  Maybe I'll go out and just blast it out of the water or maybe I'll just barely squeak under the 27:10 mark.  I feel like I'm in better shape to go under 27 minutes.  But we will see on Saturday.  

The training went well this week.  Had my hardest workout on Monday where I did 2 minutes with a 1 minute recovery 11 times.  I've did this workout prior to my other 5K and I think it really helped me out.  Hoping it does the same this time! Otherwise it was a lot of easy running for the most part!

Run happy everyone!

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