A/R TT....Round 3 - 10min TT, 10k TT, 10m TT, Saturday July 4th

Hannibal_Smith wrote: »

I am so happy! 1:10:17. I thought I was pushing my luck hoping for 1:10, put if I kept my cool, I might just get it. Maybe I could have found those 17 seconds somewhere and I'd be absolutely over the moon!!! But I'm not going to let that spoil today.

I can't thank all the organisers of these TTs enough. In the middle of this pandemic, when I'm sure you're all flat out with WFH, family life and your own running, you all clubbed together and put these events together for the good of everyone else. Fair play lads.

I always thought that when people said 'slow down', it was for the easy part of any training run. What I didn't twig, until I did the mile TT, is that you have to control the workout paces too. I may be able to hold on to a pace I like seeing on my watch for a 2 minute interval, but if I can only do a mile in 10:30, that's what I should be working off. So, although I was bitterly disappointed with the mile TT, I benefitted so so much from doing it. I spent 2015 thinking I was doing a terrible job and not improving (no disrespect to ecoli or whatever his name is now and his plan ), but when I look back at the workouts on Strava, I know now I was running everything way too fast plus sprinting through intervals so it's no wonder I had nothing to pull out of the bag when it came to race days and ended up like an angry little gremlin

Today, with the benefit of sorting my paces out in the training runs, I could go out and know I could take it all at a pace that was appropriate. I changed my route last minute to include the hills, because when I looked at my planned route it was way too downhill. So when the hills came I tackled them okay and when I tired I told myself that going uphill was not the time to be making judgement calls, so I kept my cool.

The paces I'd set I worked not to hit if it felt too comfortable, so I can't say I took any part conservatively, or was kind to myself at any stage. I began to waiver in mile 5 so I just blanked everything out and held on, and the benefit of all the tempo/threshold training runs came in to play. When I tried to push with half a mile to go, I started counting with a plan of just lashing all I had left in to it with quarter of a mile to go. But it flew in so fast (time wise) I lost track and left it too late, maybe that's where I would have got those 17 seconds! :pac:

But I'm delighted. I'm not where I was in 2015, but I'm certainly not where I was 10 weeks ago either!

Thanks for these TTs and for allowing a slow-mo like me to take part and for answering all the stupid queries I'll never regret putting my name in despite the results being way off where everyone else is.

I'll go donate now.

Best of luck everyone else running today!!