Race report: St. Patricks Day 10K, March 6, 2016

I ran the St. Patricks Day 10K today, finishing in a time of 41:00 flat.  That's about a minute slower than I had hoped to run, so oh well.

I'm been absolutely slammed with work this week (and very stressful work to boot), which is a blessing in that it deprives me of the time needed to analyze this race to death :).

Do I think the crazy workweek contributed?  It's hard to tell.  On the one hand, life stress mimics training stress, and so a race taper can be undone by outside circumstances.  On the other hand, I've run plenty of great races and PRs after horrible stressful weeks, enough to establish that a bad week is not a sure sign of doom.

As for what happened?  Not sure.  We had great weather and a fast course, and I started conservatively.  But I just ran out of gas physically, and then faltered mentally.  Including a brief patch of walking around mile 5.  I'm not proud of that, but I'm not going to hide it.

Though I run watchless, by feel, I do think I still "cheated" a bit here, in that I didn't stick to my "90-95%" effort rule early on.  Instead I was a bit too impatient early in the race, and overreached some around miles 2-3, which set me up for a bad patch later.

So, I live and I learn.  And hope to catch up on sleep this week.

Splits:
Mile 1: 6:29
Mile 2: 6:31
Mile 3: 6:30
Mile 4: 6:29
Mile 5: 7:00
Mile 6: 6:42
Last bit : 1:18 (downhill kick)

Other notes:

• My team won both the male and female overall team titles, which was nice.  And I was one of the scorers for my team, which means I get a check for this race.  Yay.
• Also got the age group win and top masters, so (as Brian noted) the day really wasn't as horrible as I make it sound.  There are times when I'm just a teenager with a quarter-century's experience.
• Used Dulera for my asthma med in the morning - breathing was fantastic.  
• Also took my pre-race caramel Machiato GU - delicious plus a caffeine burst. Racing is the only time I use caffeine, and I think I need to learn to be careful, since it affects my perception of how easy the first miles of a race are. 
• I'd posted previously about my frustrations in not being able to get my heart rate up - it was basically stuck at the same max HR, in the low 170s, for both intervals and tempos, for both 5Ks and half marathons?  Well...that wasn't the issue today, as it peaked at 185 today, with a fair amount of time over 180.  Of course, that may also explain some of the mental issue today - I'm just not used to that level of aerobic effort, since I haven't hit it in so long.