There aren't many things in life where you know you crossed a line and things won't be as they were before. First day in school, your first kiss, getting married (for the first time), learning to ride a bike... The list goes on and on.
One of those key moments happened to me last weekend at the Zagreb spring half marathon. I am now 3 months into my new season and I can see how I improved compared to last year. One of the reasons for this is a new training program I got from MyProCoach. It's a great mix of speed, strength, and endurance workouts that's really elevated my performance to new levels.
Although I am focusing on triathlon throughout the year, I really like taking part in all kinds of running races and use them for training. I was aiming for a sub 1:30 time for my half marathon which was around 4:16 min/km. I have been running faster before but usually I had to muscle my way to the finish line. Something I wanted to avoid this time.
I started somewhere in the middle of the pack which resulted in a 4:40 for my first kilometer. This meant I have a little ground to make up for and what I would usually do was kick into a higher gear and hit a few 4:06 times for my next kilometers which would set me up for a tough second half of the race.
This time I kept my cool and going at ran at paces of around 4:16 to 4:20 per kilometer and just tried to stay relaxed for the first lap.
This is my relaxed face...
Once I was done with the first lap which I finished in around 45:25. I knew I was somewhat of a minute short of my target time so it was time to kick it up a notch.
I took an energy gel and downed it with some water at the aid station and off I was. The times started dropping from 4:11 to 4:16 per kilometer and for some funky reason I felt good.
Not the "Come on you can do it!" good but more like "Hey! I feel fresh and strong!" good. My legs were tired but I knew I could kick it up even more whenever I wanted. And that's basically what I did.
I even managed to have two 4:07 per kilometers on kilometers 18 and 21!!! All in all I finished the second half in 44:30 which is crazy. I slipe right under the 1:30 mark for the half marathon.
... and this is my happy face :)
After the race I felt tired and exhausted but I knew that if the race was going for another 5-6-7 kilometers I could have ran them at the same pace as well.
My average heart rate was 167 which is well into Zone 5 but still around 5-6 BPMs lower than on races I was just marginally faster.
My training (both physical and mental) is starting to pay off big time. Earlier I would have chased to connect to ma goal pace right away. Now I kept my cool and just chipped away on my target time making sure to pick up the pace later when other people started to feel tired. I overtook one runner after another and this in turn gave me another boost and pushed me just a little more towards the finish line.
If you would like out to check out my run in more detail just click here and have a look. The two things I really like while analyzing the data are my high cadence of around 183 as well as my low vertical oscillation ratio of just 6%. Both of these stats put me in the top 5% bracket for running and something I still want to improve.
What these metrics mean is something I will be going into more detail in another post soon (I am thinking about doing a video for it as well. A nice change of pace for me as well).
In the end I finished 51st of 652 who started the race which isn't by best result for this race but one I am most definitely proud of.
I became a runner.