Week 9: Performance Anxiety

(Monday, 22 October)
AM: lifted. Antsy after what happened to the guys on Saturday. Bumming out.

PM: Went to Garfield and back on San Marino. The shins felt bad the first few miles. Legs feeling kinda dead from Saturday.

(Tuesday, 23 October)
5 intervals down on the grass on Huntington, 400-600s, then the uphill (almost) mile to California along Sierra Madre grass. The sprinklers were on and Susan ran us right through them, shouting back at us: "It's practice for Oregon!". Oh, Susan. You're the reason I wake up at 6.30 to go running.

Felt a little disheartened by my slowness, especially on the shorter intervals, which were a struggle to keep up with basically everyone but maybe some dude in a wheelchair. But I felt a little more competent on the longer ones.

(Wednesday, 24 October)
40 minutes really chill in the AM to escape Death Air. I was very, very glad I wasn't running when I saw the air quality in the afternoon. Apparently Solana Beach is getting evacuated.

(Thursday, 25 October)
Another AM run. Concerned about the air on Saturday, since we'll be running later in the morning (9.45). Did a tempo run of 10 minutes from Arden to the end of Lombardy, and then 1 on 1 off on the way back to campus. Short, but high quality. I felt like the 10 minute interval was way more of a confidence booster than 5-4-3-2-1 usually is. It was around 30 seconds slower than race pace, and the 1 on 1 offs were slightly above race pace. Definitely a booster run. Keep this in mind.

(Friday, 26 October)
Prerace, in AM again to avoid yucky air. Overall, feeling nervous and VERY achy all over. What gives? Legs dead and tired and gross. Maybe it's all in my head.

(Saturday, 27 October)
Conferences, La Mirada park. Perfect running weather. Cool, overcast, a teeny bit of rain during our race. I stuck to my plan and got a PR out of it (25.36). The plan was to go out *under control* and stay under control for the first 2 miles, and then to gradually amp up the pace until I was going all out for a hard, but not dying, finish. I did keep my times under control - 6.50, 7.10 (14.00), and then 21.07. Maybe a little too slow with those slower than 7 times. But the last .75 jumped down to 4.30, and I closed pretty fast on the folks I was picking off at that point.

What it was not: an aggressive or daring race.
What is was: a confidence builder (to PR after basically running a tempo run for the first 3 miles).

Next up: get bold.

Reward: Halloween party with mohawk.

(Sunday, 28 October)
Off. Worked on fellowship apps. Blah.