Friday 4 March 2011

Pre-race motivation

So tomorrow is my first 5k of the year and while I'm going into it with only a general time in mind my competitive juices have been fully stirred into action.

For those of you who don't know, mum is also a runner and since I started focusing on running we've taken great delight in trying to best each other in races. Mum's 54 this year so you might think being beaten by a male 20 year-old runner is a forgone conclusion.
Oh god, GO AWAY

I wish.

Mum ran the Metro Aberdeen 3k Proms Race #6 this afternoon, in preparation for the Arbroth Smokies 10M on Sunday (which I'm heading up to support). Despite it being 'very windy' in her own words, she still managed to run a PB of11:14. That's 90% WAVA.

Bearing in mind we're roughly the same fitness levels right now, an 11:14 3k translates into an 19:29 5k by my books, which in our little inter-family competition means I'll be going hell for leather for that tomorrow. 6:17/m pace (94s/lap) is the magic target which I was comfortably hitting during 8*400 @ 5k (92s/lap) so sub-19:30 is very much on.

Extending the rivalry over all race distances we've both done shows how I might just be pulling ahead:

1M - Me 5:56, Mum 6:07
5k - Me 19:54 (hopefully soon to change), Mum 19:28
10k - Me 40:27, Mum 40:28
10M - Me 69:55, Mum 71:19
HM - Me 93:45, Mum 93:57

Needless to say, tomorrow will be interesting. 2.8M @ 9:33/m today, meeting a friend at halfway on his way back from 11M (he's training for Edinburgh Mara). Everything felt very good and 'floaty' which is how I should feel before a race.

2 comments:

  1. I feel sad that 50% of all the comments I have ever gotten on my blog are spam.

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  2. I do not understand what you are talking about. What is a PB and a WAVA?
    Other than that you're mum's been running longer than you so she deserves to beat you! :P You'll catch up one day though!

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