Emilie's Run 2007 - My Heavy Mental Race

Q: Why is Kelodie a BOP (back-of-the-pack) runner?
A: Because her mental is too heavy

Prologue
My goal was to PB on this course. It’s a flat and fast course, and I thought my 10K training would have helped me improve my 5K times. But then, life happened: I hurt my toe while in Victoria and wasn’t able to wear shoes for 10 days; I had a tough cold; I travelled for work to both ends of our country. In the 4 weeks between my 10K race and Emilie’s Run, I ran 3 times only and it never went well.

Still, I thought I could PB if I got my mental on. The mental part was crucial for this race, because I’d have little outside motivation to keep me going when it got difficult - there aren't a lot of spectators on the course and this race wasn't an A race for me. I knew my legs had had plenty of rest and that they were good to go, but I wasn’t too sure about the cardio and the mental.


What Happened
I was on track for a 35min finish after 3K, but I lost a lot of time walking and trying to talk myself into being strong between the 3rd and the 4th kilometre mark. My stupid mental won!!! It’s so heavy that sometimes I feel like I carry a pack sack full of rocks with me when I run.

I missed my PB by the time it takes to say “I almost got a PB but my mental was too weak that day”… 7 seconds!!!

My splits:
@1km 7:01
@2km 14:00
@3km 21:56
@4km 30:02
@5km 37:14

Prologue
- I’m impressed that I achieved such a result after 2 months of “almost zero training”
- Last year, I ran this course in 40:45. I shaved 3:50 off last year’s time!
- I tried to focus on running with joy and being grateful to be out there – it worked for a while, but then I didn’t care about joy anymore!
- Having a plan (be as close to 7:00/k as possible in this case) and sticking with it works, as long as the mental doesn’t interfere
- There was an article in RW about how going all out on a 5K race was a good strategy, even if your second half was slower: I tried it and it works good (again, as long as you don’t crash before the end!)
- It was great that Joe was shooting pictures at the 4K mark: it motivated me to keep running to have great running pictures (and my pictures are amazing!!!)
- I “forced” my parents to come see me do this race. You should have seen my mom at the finish line: it was priceless how proud she looked. This sure made me feel good.

Bottom Line
There will be other races to get my mental on and PB.

My thoughts on this race a week later...
Looking at my stats for this race, I realized that my HR was very high during the whole race (average HR was 175 and it went up to the 180s many times). A HR that high can't be a good thing and certainly explains why I needed frequent walk breaks. I'm happy that I didn't feel too bad after the race, like I did after my 10K, because I could easily have puked and felt very sick after keeping my HR that high for so long.

From this race, I understand that I need to get back to consistent running. This morning, I ran by HR. It was quite discouraging to be back at doing 1:1s, but if this is what it takes to get back to where I was, I'm willing to do it. I still have the endurance to run longer, but I don't have the ability to do it within healthy HR ranges and I have to do something about it. I can't run at my lactate threashold all the time!

I'll be back with a revenge next year, you can count on this, Emilie!