I followed through with racing the Steveston Ice-breaker 8km yesterday in Richmond. The race lived up to it’s name this year as the temperatures dropped over night, from the 6-12 degrees I have been enjoying the last couple of weeks, to 0 degrees. And yes there was broken ice and plenty of it on the course. Luckily the only hazard it created that I saw was after the race during the warm-down.
Temperatures may have been down but it was clear and sunny for the race. This was my first time doing this race(I would have preferred to have run it a bit fitter) and it was what it promised and out and back, mostly on gravel path with many twists and turns.
The reason behind running for me was to get an idea of where I am and what better way to throw myself into a race and see what I could force myself to do. After last weeks workout I figured I was in not bad shape, at least not bad enough to embarrass myself out there, so I saw a good opportunity to find out where I am right now and what I should be doing in the next few weeks during workouts.
I ended up 4th in 25:23 behind:
Dave Jackson 24:44
Jeremiah Ziak 24:52
Mark Wilkie 25:06
Not quite where was last year at this time (23:36 at Pioneer 8km), but there is an upside to that; I was in really good shape at the end of January and mid February last year where I pr’d at the half marathon distance on a solo effort in Huntington beach, but for the purposes of this year there is no point in being in too good of shape too early; especially when the big focus isn’t till next fall.
That being said I have two workouts this week with the group before I head off on a 13 day mini training camp and I now know what to aim for pace wise on tuesday’s mile repeats, If I can’t average at least 10 seconds faster per mile than my overall race pace from yesterday then something is wrong.
P.S. good job by the top three and other LMElites in the Icebreaker race yesterday and just in case my teammates didn’t see the congrats on the lmelite website after their CIM marathon Great job Dylan/Ricard/Trevor and Shauna. and a great debut marathon by Watson in Houston yesterday!
