Turkey Trot 5K Recap

Today was the day I had been thinking about for the past 5 weeks or so.  It was race day! My last race, to recap, was the trail race at the end of August.  It went well but I came out of that race kind of down due to expectations being set to high and it messed with my head a bit.  I did get over and it's helped me reframe how I think about racing. Racing shouldn't be worrying about what place you will get or even what time you should get (mainly for trails I've discovered) but should be about you versus the course. So that's how I went into this race.  

As I mentioned in my post last week my critical power did go down but I thought that was a mistake.  However I thought about it all week and thought maybe it was correct.  On Monday I did a work out of 6 times 2 minutes with 1 minute recovery which was about half of what I had done the previous Monday and I have to say it felt relatively easy.  So heading into the race I told myself that I was going to and stay between 320 and 340.  The lower end would be pretty close to what the Stryd race calculator told me and the 340 was the very upper end of where I thought I could do something.  So while it was a large range I thought it fit well.  In hind sight I probably should have setup a workout where the first mile was in the 320-330 range and the last 2 miles in the 330-340. But I'll take it. 

In typical fashion I started about the 3rd row back, maybe the 4th, and was promptly passed by a bunch of people.  This doesn't bother me because I know my pacing will be better.  My first mile was my lower power wise, 327 watts at a 8:17 per mile pace.  This was mostly down hill with a bit of a tail wind.  The second mile was at 332 watts at a 8:24 pace.  So I was in my range and things were not feeling that bad.  I remember asking myself if things felt to hard and I never told myself it was.  I felt myself pushing right up against that line, perhaps going over, and then coming back (when my watch would beep and buzz at me!).  Mile 3 was done at 341 watts and an 8:22 pace.  There were a couple of places where I tried to bridge over to a couple of people, kids really, that were in front of me, but I couldn't get there so I shut it down fairly quickly and just continued on my way.  I did have a large kick at the end that one person commented on.  I ended up with an unofficial time of 25:38 which is a few seconds off of my PB at this elevation (I have a all time 5K PB that was 23:50 back when I lived in Iowa). 

I'm super happy with this result and am glad to take it into my half marathon training.  My critical power did jump up to 332 which I think is a bit more in line. I suspect it will bounce around but hopefully it can stay somewhere in that range.  I'm confident that with the half marathon training and some specific training I will finally break the 25 minute barrier, perhaps crush right past that, and get a new PB.  I still have dreams of running sub 20 but I'm not sure if that will happen or not!

Happy running all!



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