Return to Fresh Pond RR and running confidence

After 2 days of complete sloth (aka too much food), I was so ready to run hardish today at the Fresh Pond series race. This is a nice little race I did all through last winter. It is free, small and low pressure. I always win it, so yes, it is not competitive:) I had no idea what to expect today mostly because I only did one real speed and tempo work, all this week, so I probably did not benefit from those at this race. After having gotten only 4 hours of sleep on Thursday night (by choice!), I collapsed @ 9:55 pm last night and slept until 8am when Petru walked me up in typical fashion, by screaming in my ear: "It's 8am mommy, you have to wake up" (I love that he wakes up and entertains himself while his parents sleep in...raised him well, LOL). After my typical oatmeal and coffee (which I ate 1.5 hours before the start of the race, which I would never do for a 'real' race), I ran 4.5 miles to the race. Got there @ 9:55 for the 10:00am start. The weather was gorgeous, high 50s, sunny, with a nice breeze. I checked out the field and did not see any of my winter peeps. One woman looked really fast -from the back I thought she was a guy, bc she was boy skinny and had very short hair, and she indeed passed me @ 2.0 mile, but she did the 2.5 mile race not the 5 miler.

We started on the "go" and I fell into a nice rhythm. I really did not know what I could do and frankly did not want to push myself all out. I though HM pace would be nice but I ended up going slightly faster. The first loop was controlled. The second hurt. My legs lost power, which makes sense because aside from this week, I have not run this pace since Baystate training. I ended up with a 30:26, which is my Fresh Pond PR. The course registered as 4:65, for a 6:32 pace, which makes me super happy at this point in time. Nice effort considering that I ran the second loop all by myself (I was first overall men and women - guess the fast guys stayed at home today!).

This is how the course looks like...and also what one has to zig zag around....today I had to jump over an off leash little guy (this would piss me off in a real race, but here, well, dogs are just part of the course)

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On my run back home I did 3x15 secs and 3x30 secs hill sprints, and thought a lot about running and racing. I can say I am a confident person in the main aspects of my life: family and work. My confidence in these areas is mostly stable. However, when I don't race for a while, I get really intimidated by paces that I used to be able to hit, or that I would like to hit. Sure, I can reframe those thoughts but there is nothing like a little behavioral experiment (aka race) to get that confidence back up. I think part of the reason why I had such a great 2011, is that I had these confidence boosts often. Sure, there was a physiological effect there too, but the mental boost was what helped the most, I think.

So here I am, 20 weeks from Boston, getting a little confidence boost from the good old Fresh Pond! So happy I raced today and so excited to get back out there this training cycle!