PRs

Honest, it wasn't just me who came away dissatisfed from this race.

The course looked fast: straight out for half a mile from the Capitol Building in downtown Denver, slightly uphill, but not so's you'd really notice; two right-angled turns then slightly downhill all the way to the finish with a minor lump inside the last 100 to the line. But it turned out to be slow.

So "slow" that I can only claim "job done", getting under 5:30. No "very pleased" 5:20 and no ecstatic sub 5:15. Worse still, I "should have" won :)

What's going on guys? We're barely a handful of miles into the New Year and already the PRs are starting. How am I supposed to keep myself reined in for Saturday's Oatmeal 5k?

Jetfuelburner's claiming something like 30 minutes off his 50k time en route to a mud-slogging finish in the Huff 50k, and Runner NYC kind of got a PR in a 5k on January 1.

How I wish I could follow Runner NYC's example and post up a long list of PRs for the year!

Instead, I'm looking at a back-sliding year, with the only highlight an unexpected victory in the Hyde Park 10k in London in July, where I came away thinking I'd produced yet another awful race only to get a heart rate monitor and congratulatory letter in the mail a couple of weeks later.

Hi all,
 
I started out 2007 with a “resolution” to run only 2 races a month.  I finished with 34 races on my schedule, so I overshot a little and, with only two races in November and just one in December, I really missed the mark earlier in the year.  September was my heaviest month with 4 total races, including 2 races on one weekend (1 mile and 18 miles – PRs in both).  I did a lot of speedwork in training, but not as much endurance training as I should have.