Friday April 18 (5000m 15:24 PR)

I improved this race. On the surface, things look very much the same as two weeks ago. My splits this time were:
4:50
4:56
5:00 = 38
15:24

So I improved one second by running the first mile faster. But I think the race was much better, because despite the slower time in the last mile, I actually was trying harder. On the "try hard" scale, calibrated to 5000m race efforts, I'd give myself about a three for Pomona, a five for today, and a seven for both of my SCIAC finals. I'm moving in the right direction. Ultimately, I want to be able to give an eight almost any race I choose to, and a nine on the big ones.

It was hot. I didn't get a reading, but I'd say 85 degrees, and sunny. It was also extremely dry. I had to breathe through my mouth, and for the duration of the race its entire interior felt parched, like a withered, dessicated gila monster's corpse, for example.

The entire race went out too fast. I was in the back of the second pack, putting me around ninth, in the first lap. I finished third, which meant I was moving up past people, trying to tuck in, realizing the guy was going too slow, and moving past again. I got to tuck in a bit more than in previous races. Maybe about half the time I was following in this race, but none of the last mile.

I feel like if I had a race where everyone was going to run a consistent pace in a pack the whole way, I'd hit a much faster time. But that's apparently not an option, so I have to learn to make the race happen for myself.

In the last mile, I was telling myself that I needed to work this harder. I could feel that I had slowed down, but I at least kept my head in it. There's still a lot more there. Also, over the last 600 or so I didn't even try to kick. In retrospect, this makes no sense. It's hard to remember exactly what I was thinking or feeling.

I was two or three seconds back from the leader. The thought definitely went through my head that I had a chance to win the race. I looked up at him, and told myself that I ought to be feeling a mad competitive fire right now. But I simply didn't. I honestly didn't care all that much whether this guy beat me. I can't decide why that is. Maybe I'm mellowing out, but I certainly hope not. Maybe it's because I was in the slow heat anyway, and so winning it wasn't really like winning. More like sandbagging. The instinct certainly kicked in at the 3000m at Pomona, so it's not gone. It just didn't fire today. I think I'm going to practice it. It sounds cheesy (at least to me), but in my hard workout next week, when I'm tired and hurting, I'm going to imagine a runner just in front of me who I have to chase down.

I hate it when people do the calculus of what their performance was "worth" under ideal conditions (you know, "if it hadn't been windy, if I had gotten more sleep last night, if I hadn't shit my pants in lap eight" etc.), but I found myself automatically doing it afterward. I think it's a worthless exercise. A time is a time. Mine was a PR today. That's good enough. It wasn't a great race, but it was a good one, and I'm happy with that. I'll try to improve it again in two weeks at Steve Scott.