The day got off to a great start when the car rental company in San Francisco saw sense and agreed to let us renew our rental agreement in the city rather than making a special six hour one way trip to Los Angeles. It means that we can stay a bit longer and explore. The day got even better when we stumbled upon a Nike Store in the city centre and the long searched for snazzy racing vest was purchased. We had an hour or so wandering around down town San Francisco killing some time. The centre seems quite nice. There are some high rise buildings (Chris’s favourite) and we also went to the Union Square which is busy and has lots of trams, shops and café’s. We’re looking forward to exploring later in the week when I am not sick with nerves at the prospect of running 12.5 laps of the track.
We arrived at Stanford University mid afternoon and had quite a long wait until my race which was scheduled for 8:23pm. This would be my first 5000m in nearly two years and we were hoping to inflict some serious damage on my personal best time. Conditions were perfect and despite my training being a little up and down over the past month, we were fairly confident that we would be able to achieve our target time. The result? 10th place in 16:08.
It is strange how when the gun fires, everything you have learnt over the last few races can be instantaneously forgotten. The best way to run is by going off steady and picking it up as the race goes on. That is what we had planned. That is what has worked so well for me over the last few races. ‘Whatever you do, you shouldn’t lead it’ Chris had warned me before the race. Ahem, yes well, I wanted to run my target lap times, I wanted to run a consistent pace the whole way, I wanted to make my target happen rather than rely on other people to pace me, what other excuses can I think off? I was so focused on running my times, I forgot about working my way into it, picking it up as the race went on. It seems crazy that I lead the race for over a mile as a group of seriously fast people (much faster than me) all bunched up behind me. The pace I was running was only slightly quicker than what we were planning so it wasn’t a disastrous plan, however the effect of some interrupted training showed and I became really tired on the last few laps and my hopes of breaking 16 minutes were gone. A more conservative effort earlier on and it may have been different. I thought I had been teleported back two or three years when I used to do this sort of thing quite often. I haven’t done it for ages, and I hope it’s ages before I race that way again. I have never been so disappointed about running a 31 second personal best before (it‘s strange how after the race all sense of perspective is instantaneously forgotten too)!
We hung around for the next couple of races and watched the women’s NCAA 10,000m record being broken in an amazing solo run by Lisa Koll. It was great to watch but slightly sickening to know that I was running a slower pace in my 5K than she was for double the distance. I have a lot of work to do. Let’s get on with the training!
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