Straw Plains 10k Race Recap: The importance of pacing

This race served as a final fitness test and speed building session for the upcoming Biltmore Marathon on March 3rd. My goals for the 10k weren't linked to a specific placement or finish time, but were focused on running equal or negative splits for the entirety of the race, meaning running the same speed or getting faster throughout the race. As a general rule, you will run your best time if you have paced yourself  to maintain the same speed or increase it slightly during a high intensity run, i.e, race. This sounds easy, but it is really hard to do, especially if you're like me and get really caught up in racing the people around you early on instead of racing within your means.

Picking a pace isn't especially easy either. To make the process smoother I used the race times predictor from runners world, a tool that can fairly accurately predict your race time based on other recent races. Based on my most recent race, a 17:52 5k on new years day, my predicted pace came out to six minutes per mile for the 10k distance. I lowered the pace slightly because my training has gone well since then and no one is really on top of their game on the morning of new years anyway.

Having a plan is good, but actually carrying it out is better. The final piece of the equation was making sure I stayed on pace. To help with this, I set my Garmin to alarm every half mile with the hope of looking down and seeing something in the neighborhood of 2min55sec for every half mile run. Surprisingly, I actually came really close to nailing that time for every half mile split. Here's the feedback from my watch.

My chip time for the race came out to 35:56, placing me 5th overall. Which for a Knoxville Track Club race ain't half bad. The rest of the TN Spine team also fared really well too, in team competition we landed in 2nd for the open division and 3rd for women and co-ed.

Trying not to get chic'd
Photo Credit: Knoxville Track Club

I feel a lot more confident coming out of this race than I did going into it. My overall speed is quite a bit better than I would have guessed at this point in the season. It's also really surprising to see how far a well researched race plan can have on your outcome. Planning can take a little of the spontaneity out of race day, which can be either good or bad depending on your personality, but ultimately helps you run a better race. Devising splits and target paces may not be for everyone, but no one is opposed to running a little faster on race day.