So, I’m back from my annual “pilgrimage” to the Tampa Bay area with my Dad. Every year since 2004, Dad and I have headed down for an extended weekend in Clearwater, which is just across the bay from Tampa and the spring training home of the Phillies. Our typical itinerary of watching two baseball games wound up being significantly altered this year, for a number of reasons.
#1 – Shortly after we got back from last year’s trip, I noticed that Tampa was a host site for the first weekend of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament. Dad and I are both college basketball fans, and this seemed like a really good opportunity, so I put in for tickets and got selected – to the extent that there actually was selection – I doubt they actually sold out at that point, if ever. Dad’s ticket was the family’s Father’s Day gift for him last year.
#2 – As you might be aware, the Phillies have been pretty good the last few years. Greater success usually brings greater interest in sports teams, and the Phillies have been no exception. Ticket demand for regular season games had exploded the last couple years, but Spring Training tickets had been relatively immune to the phenomenon – until this year. Despite getting in within minutes of tickets going on sale for individual games, I could only get general admission seating (on the grass above the outfield wall) for Sunday’s game with the Yankees, and couldn’t do much better for a Friday game against the Pirates. I initially got tickets for both games, but after some thought determined that with 6 basketball games on the schedule, 2 baseball games might be overkill, so I re-sold the Pirate game tickets.
#3 – I had been planning on running a 5k in Reading 2 weekends prior to our trip. However, the weather ended up being really miserable that day, and since I hadn’t pre-registered, I decided it wasn’t worth the trip. There wasn’t anything in the area to run the weekend prior to the trip, and after the trip would be getting too close to the race I wanted to run in mid-April. I didn’t want to skip out on a March race entirely, so I decided to see if there were any races in the Tampa area during our trip that would be feasible for me to run. It turned out that there were several, and I settled on the Strawberry Classic, which was just outside of Tampa, on Saturday morning.
I am sure that I will cover some of the highlights of the rest of the trip later this week, but for now, I want to focus on the race. I was a bit leery of scheduling a race on a vacation, simply because I wasn’t sure how well I’d be able to manage my rest, nutrition, hydration, etc going in. Thursday was a crazy day – we flew down to Tampa first thing in the morning and went directly from the airport to the basketball arena, where we were for the duration of the tournament action for the day, which meant we didn’t get back to the hotel under after midnight. Friday, however, we didn’t have anything planned, so we slept in, went and had a nice big breakfast, and then stopped at a grocery store so I could pick up some bottled water for the rest of the day, and some cereal bars for snacking that evening and pre-race food the next morning. The rest of the day centered around watching basketball from the comfort of our hotel room, so I was pretty sure rest wasn’t going to be an issue.
I got up just after 6 on Saturday morning, and we were at the race by 7:15. One concern I had about running in Florida was climate – it’s obviously typically much warmer there than in central PA. In fact, it got into the mid-80s every day we were there. However, at race time (8:00 am), it was still only in the high 50s and still – perfect running conditions. It was also consistent with some of the warmest weather I had trained in prior to the trip. It was funny watching a number of the natives shiver – I guess it’s all about what you’re used to.
The start of the race was somewhat disorganized, with some confusion about where the start line was. They set us up at one spot, then moved us forward, then moved us back again. None of these spots turned out to be the “real” line, as I’ll detail later. Also, there was a 10k race that started at the same time and split off about a mile and a half in, and between the 2 races I believe there were well over 400 racers in total. The director was trying to shout some important instructions (like how the courses were marked) over everyone without any amplification. I was near the front of, so I was fine, but I guarantee there were plenty of people who never heard him. It wasn’t a big deal, but this was the 30th year for this race, so it seemed odd that it wasn't a tighter ship.
Once we finally got started, I settled into what felt like the pace I was looking for. I had adjusted my training after the last race to include much more work at/near expected race pace, and it clearly paid off, because based on a woman who must have had a GPS and was a couple steps in front of me, I ran the first mile in 7:14, which was precisely what I was looking for. Everything I had seen about the course on the internet led me to believe that it was very flat, at least by PA standards, and that evaluation proved to be correct. There were some rolling slight ups and downs, but nothing I would have classified as hills. Between that and the weather conditions, this was a perfect setup for a PR. I hit the 2 mile marker at 14:40 on my watch – which indicated that I had slowed down on the 2nd mile – but it turns out that was actually misleading. (More on that later) I was definitely starting to feel it, but I was still very strong. This was a new feeling for me this late in the race, as opposed to my previous 2 races where by this time I was just trying to hang on and drag myself to the finish.
At this point, I was feeling very good about at least coming in under 23 minutes, which would have been a PR by over a minute and was my “middle” goal time. When I got to a point that I recognized from the map as being about 2.5 miles in, I lifted my pace just slightly and began really looking forward to the turn back towards the finish. It came just before I hit the 3 mile marker, at which point I looked at my watch and knew I was going to break 23 with ease. There was one final turn to the finish, and after I made that I started my finishing spring, crossing the line with the clock at 22:31 – a PR by over 90 seconds, and 1 second off my most optimistic goal time.
As it turned out, the course had actually been a bit long, 30-40 yards long. They had started us well back off of the real line (which I had noticed when we ran past it and wondered about) because the road was much more narrow at that point and they were concerned about squeezing a mass start through the space. So, I actually probably ran closer to a 22:20. This also explained why my second mile (based on the mile marker) seemed to drop off from my first, which had been tracked from our actual start by GPS. It’s actually probably a very good thing there wasn’t a 1 mile marker based on the “real” start, or that I didn't seen it, because I would have thought I was going too slow and probably lifted the pace unnecessarily.
Suffice to say, I was thrilled with the run. Of the races I have run to date, it was first one that I felt I had run a quality race. After running the first two miles at about a 7:15/mile pace (accounting for the extra length at the start), I covered the last 1.1+ in 7:51, which comes out at a 7:00-7:05/mile pace. That’s the first time my last mile has been my fastest, and in fact, I’m sure it was also the first time my last mile wasn’t my slowest by a good bit. I was not passed by anyone in the 2nd half of the race, which was also easily a first.
That being said, I still had some very good takeaways in terms of areas for improvement, mainly related to finishing. As pleased as I was by my last mile, it could have been better. I was glad to finally have something left for the last mile of a race, but I felt like I probably had too much left when I crossed the line. In hindsight, I probably could have lifted the pace a bit starting at the 2 mile marker, and I definitely should have started my finishing sprint at the 3 mile marker, rather than waiting for the very last stretch. I’m not kicking myself over this, because I went into the race wanting to miss on the conservative side of my tactics, if I missed. I knew all along I was running a very solid race, and I’ve not raced enough yet to really know how to interpret how I’m feeling late in a race, so I was very cautious about making a tactical mistake that would cause me to blow up before the finish. Going forward, however, I will really be looking to maximize that finish. The first step was having a race where I got into the last mile in a position to have to make those types of decisions, as opposed to one where I was simply hanging on for dear life. Not finishing as well as I could have probably did cost me an age group award, however. I finished only a few seconds behind the guy who finished 3rd in my age group, and I was really gaining on him coming to the line. I’m pretty sure I would have had enough to get by him had I started my finishing sprint 100 yards further back. Oh well!
So, all in all, it was an awesome day and definitely validated my decision to bail on the Reading race. I'm very excited about getting back into training this week, after a little recovery, and preparing to try to build on this race with some other races later in the spring. My long term goal is to go under 20 minutes, and to that end, I want to at least be under 22 - ideally cracking the 7:00/mile pace barrier (~21:45) - by mid-May/early June, before I take a break from more intense training/racing during the hottest part of the summer. That seems significantly more attainable now than it did before this weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment