Post-Bloomsday Run Down

First off, I would like to say the pun in my title was not intentional.... but I intentionally did not change it.

Anyways, it has now been over 48 hours since I raced the Bloomsday 12k in Spokane and I have had a lot of time to reflect on what happened Sunday morning. Needless to say, I am not happy about my performance. Despite my promising work-outs the past few weeks and the solid times I've been posting on the track, I fell well short of where I should of been and ever shorter of where I wanted to be in the race. For instance, a few weeks back I did a work-out of 6x1000m. I averaged a 2:58 for the work-out, with the fastest being 2:51. My goal pace for the race was 3:10/km. That is a 12sec/km difference. That's a significant difference. I should have easily been able to drop off 12 seconds per kilometer and ran 3:10 pace, easily. But I didn't. I have looked back to try and see exactly what might have contributed to my poor performance and I have been able to think of a few.

1. Lack of recovery from previous weekends 5k/steeple double

Honestly, I think I should have stuck with only the 5k the weekend before Bloomsday. A big effort to earn a PR followed by a hard effort to simply maintain a decent steeple the next day took more out of my legs than I ever imagined. I spent the whole week feeling like I had tree trunks for legs. Although the work-out went well on Wednesday, I still felt bad and weights did not help. I took Sunday off after my steeple and did my long run Monday, but it did little to help me recover.

2. Trouble sleeping throughout week

Although I tried to sleep well, the truth is, sleep didn't come particularly easy for me last week. I got a good nights sleep in two nights before like you're supposed to, but the other nights were hit and miss. This could also contribute to my lack of recovery from the track double.

3. Morning race v. Night race

This entire outdoor season, all of my track races and work-outs have been run during the afternoon or evening. The mornings have been devoted to either easy shake-out runs or long runs (Sunday's only). It is possible that my body was not conditioned to be ready for a early morning hard effort and simply wouldn't wake up (more a theory than a solid reason, but I felt it was worth mentioning).

4. Insufficient warm-up

I did feel a bit cool and stiff at the beginning of the race. I could have done a few more drills and done them in a more thorough manner.

That is really all I could think of. Like I stated before, all signs really did point to me having a good performance, but I simply did not. Luckily, this is not the end of my season this spring. In 5 weeks I have another 12k road race to run, the Sounds2Narrows in Tacoma, WA. Last year I placed 5th there and this year, the main goal is top 3, with the secondary goal to win. This week is going to be an easy week to try and rest some more, then I will jump back into it, beginning my taper 3 weeks out. Hopefully I will show up ready to run this time, especially since this race is in my own backyard....