Cotton Row

This week was a great training week for me, capped off with a 10K at the Cotton Row.

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to spend time with John Hannah learning about swim stroke.  It is always a pleasure working with John and I try to soak everything up like a sponge when he is talking about swimming.  My swim times continue to get better, but it sounds like I still have a few flaws in my form that will make me more efficient and faster when I correst them.  John is coming back in a few weeks to spend more quality time with me, so look out Michael Phelps.

I did some killer bike intervals this week.  I feel like I am getting stronger everytime I do them.  I capped off the bike week with a 70 mile ride at an easy power zone.  It is actually hard to keep your power in a low zone, but a good skill to have if you want to be able to run a marathon after you complete a 112 mile bike ride.

On Sunday, it was prep day for the Cotton Row, so the only thing I did with my legs was an easy 30 minute run.  I also took advantage of the trip downtown to pick up my race packet to stop by the gym and get in a quick swim.  I did 25 X 100 yards on a 1:45 pace.  That means that I get 1:45 to complete 100 yards.  If I finish in 1:00, I get 45 seconds rest, but if it takes me 1:45, I get no rest.  I swam pretty hard during this workout and did all 25, never having less than 10 seconds rest.  It wasn't long ago that I could not swim a 100 yard set in less than 1:50 at full strength, now I can do 25 of them at a much faster pace and it doesn't hurt as much.

So, Memorial Day was a beautiful day.  We started off getting the kids up at 5 AM so that we could go to the race.  I toed the line with about 2000 others at 7 AM sharp.  I saw a bunch of people I knew and quickly realized that the Cotton Row is the place to be on Memorial Day.  I can't believe I have never done this race before, but I will definitely be back next year.

My goal for the race was to complete it in under 9 minutes per mile pace, which would have been around 55:45.  I didn't want to focus too much on pace, as form was the most important and finishing a pretty tough 10K (although, this does not compare to how hard the 10K was last week in Guntersville).  The first mile was a huge gaggle of people, everyone getting settled into their pace, several passing me and me passing several.  I just held my pace and took it easy.  When I made it to mile 1, they showed a split time of 8:30, which was 30 seconds less than my goal.  Thoughts started going through my head, was I going too fast and going to slack off and not make my goal?  I decided that I still felt ok, so I stuck with it.  I went to mile 2 and it said 17:00, which meant that I was still on the same pace.  I still didn't feel too bad and this was mostly up hill, so I kept going since it was going to get easier in a little while.  I kept the same pace until around mile 3 when the huge hill came and everyone started walking.  I probably shouldn't have, but I joined in on the walking and it felt good.  When I made it to the top of the hill, there was only one short up hill portion and the next few miles was making up for the big climb that we had made to get back to the bottom.  About a mile into the down hill portion, Natalie Westbrook caught me from behind.  It is probably a good thing because I was dead and was still way faster than my goal, even with the walk up hill, but she said stay with me and lets go.  I hung with her for a few miles, but just couldn't keep up towards the end, but running with her got me to a point that I would not have been, so I was thankful, even though that is not what I was thinking at the time.  I finally made it to the point where I could see the finish line, and I just took off.  It was great to cross the finish line in 54:10, which was 1:25 faster than my goal, or a pace of 8:40 per mile.  I felt strong when I finished and look forward to doing this race next year.  I came in 581 place out of 2013 finishers, which I can live with.

Next, week, we are headed to the beach for a long weekend.  Hopefully, I will get an opportunity for some more great trainig.  I will keep you posted.