getting buff

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Queen of the Lake

Wow, fun runs have certainly changed since I last went to one. It never occurred to me to bring oodles of cash to spend on the shoes, clothes, food and everything else that was on offer at the end of the race.

Here was my race report on the ausrun forum

Well, what a day!!

Perfect weather for running - not too cold, not to hot - it was juuuuust right.

Minor hiccup before the start when I saw how long the clothing queue was - so bolted back to the car to drop it off and dashed back to try to make the start - we'll call that a "warm up".

Took a little while to get over the starting line (these automatic timing things are pretty fandangled). Second minor hiccup when I realised my plans for tracking my pace were a little derailed. I had strapped on just the watch of my HRM but because I never shelled out for the one with the personally coded signal, every time someone ran past wearing a HRM, it reset my watch.

Went through the halfway mark feeling still okay but when I tried to kick the speed up a notch at the 3K mark, found there wasn't much kick left in the tank. The self talk got a little amusing in the last couple of Ks as I desperately tried to get myself to give myself permission to walk. But I overruled myself and kept running.

The final sprint at the end nearly killed me dead I tells ya. Gun time was 37:40ish which I am thrilled with - I was aiming to beat 40min. Was happy enough that I wasn't lapped again by the winner of the 10K (just).


A couple of other things - pretty sure I saw the wife and daughter of one of my clients lining up to register for the race. They are a whole superfit running family and the whole running ugly thing doesn't fit with the lawyerly image. So I avoided them.

Towards the end of the race I started to reel in some people who had started out running and ended up walking. That felt good. But I am pretty sure I became some people's nemesis person. There were a few people who would run past me and then stop to walk. I would pass them while they were walking and then they inevitably would use the occasion of me passing them to prompt them to start running again. Heh.

I did manage to pass all of my nemesis people (the girl in the red nike vest and the two women with white shirts running together pushed me right to the end but red vest fell behind at about the 4K mark and white shirts were blown away by my massive sprint at the end).

Will check the tag time when the results are posted, but on gun time I ran about half a minute per km faster than my training pace. No wonder I wanted to stop towards the end!! Now it is 6 weeks to the first Spring into Shape so training starts in earnest.

EDIT - Tag time was 37.10 which I am very pleased with. Lots of room for improvement but I expected that. 170th in Age category, 450 overall.

3 Comments:

Well done deege :)!! It was really nice to catch up with you this morning.

Excuse my ignorance but what is the tag time??

Spring into Shape ......bring it on, woohoo!
WOW, well done, you did so well, especially running so much faster than your training time. Amazing what the body can do when you ask it nicely!

The Spring into Shape course is great, you'll love it. I run parts of it almost every day.

Lee - there are 2 times in races that use a timing device. Your Net Time or Gun Time which starts when the gun goes off and the Chip/Tag time which is your actual time from passing under the transmitters at the start and finish of the race, this is the important one!
Well done Deege - fantastic report! That self talk thing is a killer isn't it? I struggle with it every time, perhaps I ought to try the running with music trick at my next race?

I reckon you did an awesome job and isn't a great feeling when you get to overtake everyone at the end ;-)

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