The Running Geek

End of Season – Fitness Loss – Time Off

The final race of the season was this past Sunday. Coming off a HUGE PB from 3 weeks back I wasn’t too worried about running another personal best in this race, especially since I had ran about a half dozen times the previous 3 weeks and done no real ‘training’ other then easy runs.

My wife and I were in the Canadian Rockies for a week and a bit touring around and needless to say we ate and drank a fair bit. I don’t have exact facts on how our fitness degrades over time but I knew I had lost some of what I had in mid September, so I decided to not put any huge expectations on myself.

I ran this exact race last year, came in 2nd (kind of, the 1st place runner went out very quick and supposedly got lost on the course), and ran a new PB. This was my first sub-40 10K.

This year I had a goal an ultimate goal to run around 37:30 and possibly try to win the race. There were 500 entrants so I figured there would definitely be some competition from somewhere.

The race went out at a fast pace (for me at least) at around 3:20 a K. The person who started right beside me took the lead and built on it right from the very first stride. I ended up in a pack with 3 other people. We stuck together for the first KM or two and then I made a move and pulled away. I continued to gain on them for the remainder of the race.

This was good and bad for me. The bad is that it’s tough to maintain a quick pace on your own that’s much above your comfort fitness level which for me is around 3:53-3:50 per K. My previous race I had another fellow with me for the majority of the race so I was pushing far harder then I do when it’s just me trying to maintain pace.

I’m not disappointed with the result. I came in 2nd and ran a 38:12. Like I said earlier I have no idea what sort of fitness loss I may have had over a 3 week off training period, so I won’t criticize the time, but I’ll surely take the 2nd place finish.

Time Off

So as I did this time last year, I’m going to move to an off training period for a couple of weeks and then into my Build-up which will get my cardio going again before moving onwards to more training sessions.

My next race isn’t until February, my first Half Marathon, but it’ll be in the snow so more of a distance test then anything.

I didn’t post much through the winter last year, so I’ll try to be more consistent with that this season.