The Human Race

Saturday was the NC State TorchRun 5k benefiting the special olympics and the NC State University Police dept.  It was a cold windy day, the race started at 8:30 and took us around the NC State Centennial Campus on a very hilly course.  It reminded me a lot of why I don't do the TOA sprint triathlon anymore.  Mostly it just reminded me of human fallacy, that we all have ups and downs and this race was certainly a low point. 

I sort of figured it would be a low point since it is the only race I'm doing this year that is a week after a full marathon.  I took last week to recover, the soreness was all gone and it felt like all of the kinks were worked out.  I also knew coming into it that the course was going to be on the difficult side.  And I weigh more now than I ever did in 2011.

Didn't Einstein say that "if you expect to fail you probably will"?  So yea, I expected to fail and that's exactly what happened.  No surprises here.  It was cold.  It was very windy.  There were no flat spots on the course, and more uphill than downhill.  My last four 5k's and my last 2 marathons have all had progressively slower times.  This one, finishing at 23:57, lived up to all of those trends.  But really the bad part is how I felt at the end.  I really wanted to just curl up and melt into a ball of mush this time.  In the past, I've run faster and felt better at the finish.  I didn't get that sense of accomplishment, that feeling that you really did something to be proud of today.  Instead I felt like I got beat up by a bunch of nerds.

The fact is that anytime you can run a 5k under 26 minutes (my plateau from 2009) it's a good day.  Officially I finished 13 / 36 in my age group and 116 / 572 overall, so both of those are in the top third.  I mean you can only do so bad and still beat 2/3 of the field, right?

So I know it's all mental.  One of the principals of Ashtanga Yoga is that the body is actually quite flexible, but the mind applies perceived limitations that we have to bust through.  It takes a consistent practice to loosen the mind and allow the body to achieve the desired results.  Right now I feel like I'm at the bottom of the sine wave.  I know it has to go up from here.  I know that now is the right time to take control back.  I can control my nutrition and get back down to the 175 lb ideal weight (for maintenance, not racing weight), and losing 13 lbs shouldn't be that hard.  So today's 188 is my starting point.  Today is the day to start building my base miles on a scheduled triathlon training plan.  Two swims, two bikes, and three or four runs every week will build my speed back up.  Increase the tempo runs and actually do some speedwork.

Now is the time to start the process to fix this.  My next race is the Run for the Oaks 5k on March 10th.  It is supposed to be the fastest course in all of the 5k's for this Second Empire Grand Prix series of races, so let's see what I can make happen in the next two weeks to run a nice fast 5k.  It also might be the last 5k I'm going to run in that series, as my other three races are a half marathon and two 10k's.  Let's make it count.