Season in retrospect

I decided to give some thoughts on my season. Since Good Friday, I had only 7 races, which included one relay that was more of a time-trial than a race. I did four 5ks, none of which were fast, but I finished with two 1500s that I felt were great. The times were close to what I ran in my last track season in 2004, and I felt as though I had fantastic race tactics. I am certain that if I had another race with solid competition, I would have gone another two seconds faster.

In one of my first track workouts of the year, I said to myself partway through an interval "Wow, how I love the track." It felt great to be racing on the track again. There is something special about running hard for just over four minutes, always with people near you, and then beating them.

What went right? It is hard to say. I felt as though I was in great shape when I left for QUBS, but while I was away, I did only one workout. I ran about five days a week, but had a lot of cross training through swimming. I came back trying to hang on to Nathan and Rob, but I very quickly got my speed back. Running a 400 in 58 seconds felt like a big turning point. It gave me confidence, and helped me control both of my races. Even though I had stopped going to the gym, I felt strong through every interval. Perhaps it is telling that I was able to run good 1500s but struggled with the longer races. I had pretty good aerobic fitness from all the exercise I got at QUBS, yet my results in the 1500 versus the 5ks suggested a 'crash course' in getting into race shape. That was odd.

I think the workouts prepared me very well. As I get older, I find I need more time to warm up properly. Steve often set workouts with short repeats (200m) at the same pace as the longer repeats to come. While other guys were running 1-2 seconds faster than me on these short repeats, by the end of the season I was only a step behind on the longer repeats, running the same pace. In previous years, I might have tried to kill the 200s, then be left tired for the longer repeats, which would be of no benefit to me. I tried to train smarter, asking Steve about the purpose of the workout. If the point of the workout was to run race pace but I felt good, I would still try to run just race pace. If the point of the workout was the run fast, I would run fast.

It was great to finish the season on a high note. I have run well the past two summers. I have not yet decided what to do with my fall racing season, but I am already looking forward to next summer. Next year I want to have a longer track season, and make a serious attack on my 800 and 1500 PBs.