This was the first "bad race" I have had in a long time, so perhaps I was due for one. Not just due; I earned this one. It was the inaugural Ft. DeSoto 15K, a distance that I normally excel at. Weather was good, I had been feeling OK in the days leading up to it. My last 15K was Gasparilla and I ran a PR of 1:05. Leading up to this race, I was much MUCH fitter and faster than I had been back in February, yet I came shuffling in around 1:06. I was crippled by a killer side stitch just after the 10K point, one that I couldn't seem to breathe through or even walk off. So the last 5K was miserable hobbling. What went wrong? Several factors:
1) This was the third weekend in a row of racing for me. The first weekend, I ran a 5K PR of 19:48 at the OneStepCloser 5K downtown. Loved it! Felt fantastic. The next weekend I ran in a miserable afternoon 5K in Dunedin and finished 20:10. The weekend after that was the 15K. During those two weeks between these races, I didn't do much weight lifting and kept my workouts somewhat tame. But nonetheless, I am not as young as I used to be, and perhaps shouldn't pull triple-headers and expect to do well on the 3rd race.
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| Finishing a 5K PR at the OneStepCloser race ("that clock says what??") |
2) I went out way WAY too fast. I hung out with the lead group of 3 other women and did the first mile in 6:17, gradually dropping down to 6:35 pace at the first 5K. After that, we all spread out a bit and I settled into a nice 6:40 pace. This pace felt very good, and I felt as if I could finish the race at this pace no problem. This was true up until the 10K mark, at which point I apparently set a 10K PR, according to my Garmin (woot!) just before the stitch hit.
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| Going out too fast with the lead pack. Like an idiot. |
3) I ate some watermelon before the race. This shouldn't really be a problem - watermelon hasn't given me trouble in the past, but I had never raced after eating watermelon either. Usually I have an orange or a banana before a race, neither of which have ever given me trouble. So while I don't know for sure that the watermelon contributed to my stitch, I can't rule it out either.
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| Side stitch hell. |
Personally, I think this was mostly a combination of #1 and #2. Mostly #2. I didn't feel worn down or fatigued during the race, so while I probably wouldn't have run as fast as I potentially could due to racing two consecutive weekends prior, it didn't cause my stitch.
Here's the glitch: going out fast usually works for me in 5Ks and 10Ks, which is what I had been training for and racing over the past couple of months. So when that lead group took off, I stayed right with them. This strategy usually pays off. But not in a 15K. That was my fatal error.
Moral of the story: don't mix your racing strategies. Don't try to run a 15K the same way you run a 5K, and vice versa.
I know I can hang with that lead pack soon....and I likely would have finished much closer to them had I not gone out so damn fast.
