Well, good thing I read Matt’s new book because yesterday at the 5k race, I forgot my Garmin watch and HRM Pro lol. First time in any workout or race since I got back into this year. I said to myself, “Ok Matt, I guess I’ll practice what you taught me in the book!”
Now, I did have my Apple Watch on, but I didn’t use its pace reporting at all. In my warm up it didn’t feel useful, didn’t seem accurate or up to date enough, so completely ignored it in the race. Funny enough, in recording the activity, I think post-race, the data is not too bad, but during the race I only looked at my HR a few times, but for the most part I was going by RPE.
To make it more challenging, I do all my runs in a flat park out here (except for hill repeats), and flat is hard to find. Hills galore. The race was mostly climbing and some tough grades for about 2 miles. So I had to try to gauge my effort on hills which I have little experience with (got more hill repeats in my training this month).
Overall I say my pacing turned out to be not too shabby. I did intentionally err on the conservative side and my race time was, which seemed accurate to my RPE (GAP actually put me more at 5k pace). I felt like I probably had 5% or so more to give, and that would’ve put me more in my 5k race zone. BUT, adjusting for hills and what not, I think I paced pretty good, especially given that was my first time going mostly ‘blind’ and in a race no less 😛
So, thanks to the 8020 crew here and especially to Matt for his Pacing book! Would have been a whole different story for me without that preparation 🙂
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This topic was modified 10 months, 1 week ago by
ryanoelke.
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This topic was modified 10 months, 1 week ago by
ryanoelke.