Crappy Long Run on a Race Week (and Pre-Race Thoughts!)

This shouldn't be shocking: after SOLID bike intervals followed by track intervals late last week, my legs were a bit heavy. And I was eating pretty crappy last week as well. (And it was the warmest/most humid run of the season, but I don't think that played into it much.) What I'm saying is Monday's long run sucked.

It started with heavy legs and just never felt better. Being I'm racing tomorrow, I told myself there was no need to dig myself a big hole by going too hard. So I said "keep the EFFORT where it should be, but be OK with your splits being SLOWER than normal."

(Oh, I also had planned to do one last hard ride the following day [Tuesday], but EARLY in that run on Monday, I told myself it was nothing but easy workouts between that point and the race tomorrow. I didn't want to race my first multi-sport race in 21 months with stupidly heavy legs!)

I had to go back to a long run BEFORE CHRISTMAS to find a slower pace for my "at pace" miles in the middle of a long run. I averaged 6:29s this week, when all of my long runs for the 21 weeks before that were all at 6:14 to 6:21 pace. So 6:29 was quite a slow down.

Degreased and washed!! Ready for fresh lube.

AS FAR AS PRE-RACE THOUGHTS/GOALS??...

I don't have anything too specific. I don't know how big the field will be, so I can't say that I'd like to place top X or anything. I'd love to shoot for an "age group" top-3.

NEW NEWS: it's the first year (that I'm aware of at least) that this race has 3 versions/distances, so I don't know what to expect because of that. The last time I did it (in 2015), it was just a 3 mile run, 14 mile bike, 2.5 mile run. Now that's the "short course" (what I'm doing), and they also added a "long course" (3 mile run, 26 mile bike, 2.5 mile run) that's heavy on the cycling, and they added a "reverse duathlon" that's REALLY bike-heavy (14 mile bike, 2.5 mile run, 14 mile bike). I could see many cycling-heavy multi-sport athletes opting for the long course. I don't know how many people will opt for the "reverse du," which is an interesting idea (just NOT for this running-heavy-athlete!). Also, this race used to have an "elite" category, and it donesn't any more. So will it draw fewer elite athletes? Will the competition not be quite as good as we're used to? Will the competition be spread out over the 3 races? Will numbers be way down because of COVID? Who knows.

So back to thinking about tomorrow's race... I'll be running the runs hard, and I'm used to that! I've had good long runs all year (except for this week), and I've been getting in decent speed work as well. My running has been very consistent! Sub-6s? Who knows (but hopefully?). I'll just be going hard. I had to look back at my race report from 2015 to see that I won my age group, only by passing 2 guys in the final run. It was a HARD race with a GOOD effort that year!

It's the bike that is the big question mark as I've only been outside for 4 rides this year. I've been on the trainer A LOT (easily the biggest winter of biking in the basement EVER), but it hasn't been a lot of hard riding. In the past I've said this a lot but I'm TOO SCARED to say this now: "I hope to push extra hard on the bike and just see what I can do in the final run." Nope. NOT saying that now. My effort on the bike will be a moment-by-moment decision. M-a-y-b-e I'll decide to try to push it a bit more, but more than likely I'll back off as I haven't been used to biking hard like that for the last 2 years. We'll see.