Smartening up for Sunday's race

Today's workout: Rest day

It was a beautiful morning today in Washington DC, the temperature was 65 when I woke up at 4:00. I looked out the window just as the sun was coming up to see two runners making their way along D Street. How I wished to join them! Unfortunately my schedule was too tight today to do any running, but next time I return I plan to do a few loops around the National Mall. I've reconciled my missed opportunity by acknowledging that I usually rest on Mondays anyway. Technically I'm tapering for an 8K I'm planning to run this coming Sunday.

I'm excited to be racing again for the first time since early April. I blew it on my last race, arriving the day after the event. This time I'm pretty sure it's on the 13th and since I've pre-registered and pre-paid I'm going to pay a little more attention to the details. Last year I ran the New Hyde Park 8K with no understanding or expectations of the course. I started fast and did about 8:25 for mile one and went downhill from there. The course isn't challenging in terms of hills but there are a few elevated sections. I recall the moment I knew I had overstepped my conditioning, I was on a section of road heading east when I started getting passed by other runners. I can remember the sound of approaching steps as one, two, three and more runners ran by and though I tried to speed up to hold them off I just couldn't sustain it. The fifth mile was brutal although I did manage to put enough energy into a final sprint that kept me under nine minutes for pace. Barely under: 8:59.

I have not run too strongly in the last week and my pace numbers reflect this. I had been hitting 8:40 fairly often and I'm almost a minute behind that of late. The good news is I don't really care. I'm judging the value of my runs by my level of satisfaction rather than purely by performance. However, I do want to beat last year's pace on Sunday and finish feeling stronger. I guess I'll need to run smarter as well.