Quote:
Originally Posted by hoopsguy
FrogMan, good to get the "bonk" out of the way ahead of the race this time 
In all seriousness, hope you are well rested and recovered in time to put together the half marathon you expect to achieve. |
hehe, yer funny, although probably right
seriously, that middle of the night episode freaked my wife quite a bit. She said she thought I was in respiratory distress at first. I remember the black veil over my eyes, sweating profusely and sitting on the floor. Can't say there's ever a good time to be sick but I didn't need this about a week and a half from my half, if only on the mental side of things. I'm pretty sure I will physically be back to 100% and well rested by the 24th but this has me freaking out about the race itself.
All my stretches at HM pace have been aimed to be at 4:20/km (6:58/mile) but I usually average 4:16/km (6:52/mile) without really forcing it. Before my first HM back in May, my goal pace was 4:30/km (7:14/mile) which was a bit slower than current goal, but I ran 4:19/km over 19 km back in May, before crashing.
With the training this Summer, the time I hit in that 5K six weeks ago (19:26) and finally the pace I sustained over the 9.74 km that my last 10K lasted, I really thought I could hit 4:20 or 4:16. I know these calculators (Jack Daniels & McMillan) are not foolproof but they do point to a possible HM pace between 4:14 and 4:19 per km but now I'm getting kinda scared. Mental blocks, really... Paralysis by analysis as they say.
Looking at the course profile, I know we will start with a descent climb but it then goes back down and stays kinda flat. Still got a week of driving myself crazy going over numbers but would have felt so much better without a reminder and a reliving of the bonk...
Then I start running numbers in Excel (you knew it was coming, right?
) and I see how little difference it makes between a 4:30 and a 4:20 pace. I mean 4:30/km is 1:34:57 and 4:20/km is 1:31:26. Yeah, ok, it's 3 minutes and a half, but take that OVER 90 MINUTES! And then my mind start juggling between the dichotomy so to speak: to "simply" finish or to really give it your all and risk not finishing? Especially assessing what that risk is...
It's probably not even a dichotomy, both are possible together, right? I could start at 4:30 for say, 10 km, and try to negative split it to 4:20 for the last 11.1 km. That would still give me 1:33:06 or a 4:25/km pace 7:06/mile)... I'm sure tons of people would be more than happy with a time like that, yet I struggle, thinking I probably could do better... But I also wanna make sure I cross that dang finish line, sigh.
That's probably just my mind going crazy because of the taper, heh
relax brain, relax...
FM