Monday, March 21, 2011

First race for 2011

Well, my training has been on and off through the fall and winter of 2010. But I got it together in early February and managed to stay healthy and train consistently.  This is my first race for 2011.


Harry's Spring Run-off
March 20th 2011, Stanley Park


Official results:


55:08.64 net time

40/51 Women40-44
344/490 Total Women
764/959 Overall
6:54/km avg pace

I have decided that 2011 will be a "recovery" year. 2010 was very training-focused and I felt that other aspects of my life - work, relationships, hobbies - were a bit lacking in attention. So... I am not planning  on doing a triathlon this year. Because to improve in triathlon I will have to spend more focused time on my swimming and cycling. Time that I am not prepared to carve out t the moment. I have tons of work to do on my swim - kicking, open water confidence. More importantly, my cycling needs some serious work - confidence, bike handling. These will require more training, more financial investment, and more learning. And while I am all about continuous learning and improvement, I feel that 2011 is not the year to do that. Perhaps 2012. 

So the focus, then, for 2011, is simply to stay healthy, train consistently, and keep up my running fitness through a series of 5k, 8k, and 10k races, leading up to a half marathon or two later in the season. I want to become a better runner, fine-tune my form and simply enjoy running. 

This first race felt good. It felt great to be racing again - to build, taper, feel the nerves at the start and pushing myself. This was a good finish time, too.  My previous 8k time had been 56:58, although I had run some previous longer races with a faster pace at the 8k mark. But, considering I had been struggling to stay consistent and healthy, this 55:08 finish is faster than all my recent training runs. I'm very pleased with it. I am also pleased about how I had prepared for this race, on my own and not coached. I planned out my own training and taper, and it worked very well. I would probably still get coaching help for a longer race like a half marathon, but for a short race like this, I was completely confident about setting up the training plan myself.

Next up, a 10k in April perhaps...

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