Beach Series Race 13

This last week I actually did a bit of running. I did about 10k in our neighborhood, up the hills and around some of the back roads. It's a nice route, it passes some farms, paddocks and orchards, with nice views out towards the Waitakeres. I'll have to haul my little camera along one of these times. That was Sunday, I could still feel it a bit while warming up.

In any case, it was another perfect night for the beach series. I was feeling fast, but the course didn't quite cooperate. The tide was on it's way in, pushing the course lines up a bit from the optimal line, and putting the north end turnaround flag into a big wide pool about a foot deep (more so on the second lap).

So I pushed hard, but my time was about 20 seconds slower than last week. I probably would have been faster on the same conditions. Hard to tell, I also did a fairly hard warmup, and ended up coming in hot to line up at the start with just seconds to spare before the gun went off . . . oops.

There are 3 races left, the series tracks a point system though all 16 races. I've noticed now that I'm currently ranked 5th in Men 30-39. The top 3 in each age group win some nice travel vouchers. I don't think I can break into the top 3, they're way ahead of me, but I think I can take number 4. Still holding out for getting back to my pre-xmas times before it's all over. We'll see . . .

Week	Time	Place	Notes
2	23:21	22nd	High tide course - loose sand, 3 laps.
3	20:56	28th	Low tide course - perfect weather.
4	22:52	28th	High tide course - good weather.
7	20:49	21st	Low tide course - hot.
8	22:23	23rd	Low tide course - out of shape.
10	23:23	30th	Low tide course - still losing fitness.
12	22:05	26th	Perfect weather, hard work.
13	22:30	21st	Perfect weather, some loose sand and splashy bits. Still feeling Sunday's run.

Splits:

Leg	Last Week	This Week
Start to South End	4:23	4:04
South End to North End	5:29	5:50
North End to South End	5:34	5:48
South End to North End	5:37	5:42
North End to Finish	1:05	1:04

Hmm . . . now that I've entered the splits . . .it definitely looks like I went out too fast: This weeks splits compared to last weeks: (-19, +20, +14, +5, -1). Looks like out too fast and into oxygen debt, followed by a gradual return to a stable aerobic pace. Wouldn't matter if there were 5 or 10 more Ks to the race, but that's typical marathon behavior that I'm trying to get rid of. ;-) Need to run more anaerobic: go out fast and keep it up.