10K, tune-up race #2
Today, a second tune-up race, although this one was a bit short for a distance runner like me. In Rotterdam, the Maastunnel has been in renovation for two years and today was the new opening, with all kinds of festivities and, as the organization calls it, the unofficial National Championship Mile – the Maastunnel Mile.
The race
As the name suggests, this race was a mile long, a bit longer than the tunnel itself. As it is a tunnel, we started downhill and ended uphill. Not ideal, but a lot of fun. Check out the race at Hopasports.
Coming out of the tunnel, near the end of the Mile. Thanks to Percy van As for the picture.
Afterwards
It was a lot of fun. There were nice people and the overal atmosphere was very Rotterdam-like, just friendly and no-nonsense.
After a warming-up of about two kilometers, I had to wait for my starting wave. There were three waves, going from slower to fastest. As I had to wait for the last wave, I got really cold, but one of my team mates was in the second wave and gave me his plastic bag to hold me warm. Nice! I set my goal to a tempo of 3:10/5:10, so the same pace I tried out yesterday during the 3*800m workout. My goal finish time was 5:10 for the mile.
The running was good – no aches, no being out of breath, just going fast and trying to hold the pace. Going uphill at the end actually felt better than I had anticipated and as I could do and end sprint, I probably could have gone a bit faster, but this felt good and finishing in 5:08 aiming at 5:10 felt great.
After the race, I ran back home (about 8K) in an easy pace. It was a good day.
Race data and results
If you want to see the workout, check it out on Garmin or on Strava. The official results can be found on this Hopasports page.
The results. My official finishing time was 5:08, but you can see how accurate Stryd was – given that the 20 meters extra could well have been caused by my late button pressing.
PS It was nice having Stryd for this race. Being in a tunnel means no GPS, but Stryd appears to be very accurate in pace and distance, which helped pacing a lot.