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Next week is the MHFS 10k, which is my target race for the XT Wings Challenge. You can see my mug-shot on Salomon’s challenge website.

I’ve been a bit slow(!) with weblog posts over the last few weeks, so I figured an update was somewhat overdue. Mainly because I’ve been very busy, and simply not had the time or motivation to actually sit down and write very much.

I’ve been doing most of my training with my running club, which has had a focus on the 10k distance over the last month or two because of the Polaroid 10k series, the Women’s 10k and next weeks Men’s 10k. So in that sense, I’ve been getting on with it and doing the right things.

I’m starting to get a bit anxious that I’ve not done enough endurance work recently, and sustaining my target pace of at least 04:30s over the 10 kilometres might be a bit tricky. I’m not very good at pacing myself either - I frequently set off too quickly, and keep going at that pace for too long and then suffering, and dropping below my target pace, in the long-run.

Runners know what I’m saying when I say that this sport we do is at least as much a mental challenge as it is a physical challenge. Knowing you can sustain a particular pace, and then actually sustaining it requires mental effort to battle the demons. It’s often not - at the time - a whole lot of fun operating at high heart rates, so you need a lot of determination to push through the thoughts and doubts that it’d be really much easier to stop, walk or just slow down for a bit. The solution is endurance work, which is what a lot of winter training involves. Simply running for longer distances at a slower pace. Mixed in with plenty of pace work, involving exertion over shorter distances.

The reward in running for me, and I imagine most other runners, comes from pushing through the personal doubts and challenges, and going on to achieve goals and targets. Even simply completing a particularly hard training session can be just as rewarding as pushing a PB by a few seconds. Just the other week we were doing 8 x 800m sessions at 10k pace. It was a lot of hard work, and a few of us taking part weren’t sure we could manage it - largely because we’d made the mistake of trying to keep pace with faster runners in the first few repeats. So finishing it felt very good indeed (as well as a timely reminder about pacing!). The 3k run home afterwards wasn’t so much fun though - I didn’t have much left in me! But that particular session was, in hindsight, probably one of the most useful I’ve had in a while.

My doubts with the MHFS 10k are that the course isn’t particularly level in the Pollok Park (PDF course map here - Pollok park is the 3.5k - 7k section). It’s certainly not hilly, but it’s not flat, and my PB does come from a flat course (doh!). There’s only one nasty hill in Pollok park, and the race course takes us down it, not up it! But as the course through the park is then very gradually back uphill, it’ll be important to push hard in the main downhill section to compensate for the loss of time later on, and not let the change in pace through the park throw me off. The “average pace” indicator on my Garmin should help here.

So whilst I’m getting a bit worried it is probably more pre-race nerves and worrying about pacing. I probably have done enough training to put on a reasonable challenge on my PB next Sunday. I’ve been running to and from my running club (ok, our training is frequently in Pollok park, so not far to return from), so I’m averaging well over 10k in the weekday club sessions, and getting decent runs in over the weekend (a nice 10 miler at 8am this morning was especially enjoyable). I managed to get my current PB by being careful about pacing, so I’m intending to do similar this time and ensure I focus on being consistent. I know how I feel when I’m at the right pace (runner, know thyself!), so if I can find that “sweet spot”, I just need to hang on in there.

Bigger than the challenge though is that this race is the first anniversary of my very first race (the 2007 MHFS 10k, so the same course) since taking up running. I ran that in around 54 minutes, so to be even considering a 10 minute improvement from a year ago still feels like a huge achievement, and I’m looking forward to comparing my performance from the two race to see how my general fitness has changed. Fingers crossed for good running weather too!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Glasgow, Personal, Running, Scotland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.