Night Before the Trot
Already in bed making sure I get adequate rest before tomorrows race, the Naperville Turkey Trot 5K.
It's the last race of the season and also what feels like the last opportunity to salvage this years racing season for me.
This year has been quite perplexing. My training runs have continued to get faster, so much so that I expected this to mean faster racing times; however, that has not been the case. And although I set a PR (personal record) in both the Shamrock Shuffle 8K and the St. Louis Half Marathon, both times were below what I expected to run.
Sure weather played a part as runners had to contend with at least 2 to 3 inches of snow at the "Shuffle" and rain fell continuously in St. Louis, where I was on pace to take considerable time out of my previous half marathon only to be forced to take a "natural break". But I train in whatever weather shows up duriing my runs and still felt that my goals were reachable given most conditions; after all, as I once heard "there is no such thing as bad weather, just ill prepared runners."
June brought the PrairieFest 5K, where I was running a 7:10 mile pace at mile 2 only to discover that as I hit the finish line that I gave back almost all of my gains in the last 1.1 miles resulting in time of 24:20 something, about 50 seconds slower than my overall 5K PR (23:32).
I spent the rest of the summer training for a triathlon where my focus on running diminished as I attempted to balance it out with the other two disciplines, cycling and swimming.
October had me racing again in another 5K but for the first time on mostly a non-paved surface. My result was around 23:37, which seemed respectable given the running resistance of an off-road surface and the humid conditions.
So tonight, as well as pre-race tomorrow, I'll be wondering what kind of performance I'll be able to deliver and will it be, at least to me, good enough to justify all of the time that I spend training.
The answer to that question will be known tomorrow sometime before 8:30 AM.
Night all ...