Saturday - no luck at Striders

I had a bit of a disaster this morning which started with locking myself out of home! As soon as I’d closed the door I realised that I was holding the key to my laundry, not the apartment! There was not much I could do, so I simply jogged up to North Head for the Striders race. I really wasn’t feeling it at all this morning, but thought I’d be fine once we got going. Quite a good turnout, I was really looking forward to having a hit out with the likes of Tom and Neil. The gun went and I was feeling more than fine. In fact, the first two kilometers were absolutely no dramas whatsoever - the Pace felt extremely comfortable, my breathing was relaxed, and I was enjoying it. Then within a split second, around the 3km mark, my legs were burning. I’ve heard that when you are struggling in a race, sometimes you can overcome it by speeding up. So I put a bit of an effort in to catch Neil who had gapped us slightly,  it this didn’t work. I knew at this stage I was gone, so contemplated whether it was worthwhile to just hang in there for a time or to call it quits. In the end, I decided the latter, as I’d completely lost any motivation and I was just fast jogging at this stage. Stopped when I saw Ben at the drink station, gave him my bib, then ran to my sister’s place at Brookvale to begin my search for a spare key (which ended up sorted after a while). Not sure what to make of today? I think that I have just run so much at 3:35-40 pace that I am aerobically fit, but anything below 3:20-3:15 I simply cannot handle at all. I’m not sure if I am missing racing enough to do the speedwork required to run a fast 10km at the moment. I’ve got a lot going on outside of running at the moment with my PhD (which I’m coming up to the final 18 months of, and really want to hit some big goals with that over the next year), so perhaps going back to simply what I’ve done for the past 6 months is the answer - and most importantly, enjoying the running as I have been without the added pressure of trying to hit certain paces and times for races. Nevertheless, I did enjoy seeing everyone out there this morning!