Rainforest 10K. This was a good race for me. It was in Regents Park, where I train every day, so I just jogged to the start as my warmup. Checked in my bag, did some strides and some stretches. I wisely hit the bathroom early, as there was a huge line for it later. It's interesting, UK races all seem to suffer from lack of porta potties. In this race, there were none at all, only park facilities which were of course, inadequate. Another thing strange for this race, there was no clock at the finish, or anywhere else, for that matter. They didn't sound the starting horn, either. I just hit my Garmin when I crossed starting mats. At least, it was chip timed race, so hopefully, they timed everyone okay. Not sure when results will be up, but I did my own timing, so it doesn't matter much. There were km markers, but some of them were inaccurate as I found out. My strategy was simple - go out not too fast as to not put myself in oxygen debt too early. I also wanted to have fun and positive experience, rather than suffer most of the race. I would have been happy with anything faster than 47 min. as I ran 47:08 3 weeks ago and felt miserable. So, right after the start, I am holding back, breathing easy, tons of people pass me, but I let them all go and try to ignore them. Few minutes later I look at my Garmin, and it says I'm running 7:00 pace!! That's not what I had in mind at all! I hold back even more and manage to slow down to 7:20 pace. I'm very comfortable. First km. comes along, Garmin says 4:35, same as 3 weeks ago. I keep the same effort, second km is 4:33. From there on, I just kept the same effort, and the pace varied a bit due to some sections being slightly uphill and others slightly downhill, but generally it was very flat. The course was 3 loops so I knew what's coming next starting from the second loop. I felt very good probably until 7km, which was a huge improvement over previous race. I was getting tired gradually, but still able to maintain the same pace. Last 2km were really hard, but at that point I shifted into the finish mode and tried to speed up. There was a long finish stretch which I tried to push as hard as I could and got to 6:48 pace on it right before the finish. Since there was no clock at the finish, I only looked at my Garmin after I crossed the mats and walked out of the chute. The total time said 46:29! I'm very happy with it, and most importantly, with the way I felt during the race. It was a hard, but controlled effort almost the entire time, and much more even than previous race. 5K split was 23:11, so I slowed down only 7 sec. in the last 5K. I also wore HR monitor, but didn't put HR data on my screen so as not to have too much information. The max. HR hit 182, and average was 171. Splits: 1km (0.62mi) - 4:36, 7:25 pace, HR 154 2km (0.61mi) - 4:33, 7:31 pace, HR 166 3km (0.67mi) - 5:04, 7:37 pace, HR 171 5km (1.22mi) - 8:57, 7:20 pace, HR 173 6km (0.63mi) - 4:47, 7:33 pace, HR 175 7km (0.74mi) - 5:29, 7:25 pace, HR 175 8km (0.53mi) - 3:59, 7:28 pace, HR 176 9km (0.60mi) - 4:30, 7:34 pace, HR 177 10km (0.64mi) - 4:30, 7:06 pace, HR 179 Afterwards, jogged back home for a cooldown. Good day today. Consistent training does pay off. Not a surprise, but it's good to be reminded once in a while. I didn't feel all that rested for this race, and my mileage is highest it's been since July, so there is no reason I can't run faster. | 