Wired

This past weekend was a filled with social races. Saturday morning was my alma mater's commemorative Hudson Relays. I wanted a good long warm up on this windy and drizzly morning, so I ran a five mile lap before running four different legs. Each leg was about half a mile and those legs really tightened up afterwards. By the way, my team - the alumni - lost yet again. We did not get lapped which seems to be our battle cry. Sunday morning I joined up with a former tri teammate and we entered a biathlon relay. We both knew we were out of shape so I ran the three mile leg and he rode fifteen. But I wanted to be at the Hinckley Du, to see some old CTC and Team ER friends. So if you haven't read them yet, check out the race reports from TriEric and DaisyDuc. They are seriously at the top of their games.

The weekend was topped off by catching Wired to Win. Pretty good show. And it fits in very well with my current mindset.

I'm wired a certain way. And I've known that for a long time. I don't know how to run 5k/10ks. I am not a time trialist on my bike. I am not even really a long course kind of guy. Go figure.

Somehow I am perceived to be "fast." So I can run quarters on the track pretty "fast." Or my Ironman or marathon times were "fast." But in races that are like standards for "fast" (ie 5k run) I'm really not that fast. I haven't been wired to deal with that kind of intensity for that kind of duration. I'll bet you would have never guessed my career 5k PR is only a 19:01, which I ran at my second to last 5k race in high school.

I'd like to get faster and I believe much of that has to do with rewiring my brain. I know how to run as fast as I can. I just spent a whole season running as far as I could. Now I need to find the threshold right before the pain sets in. A few years ago, a friend of mine said something that makes more sense to me now: "To get better at racing, get out and race more." By golly, I think I've found a little experiment for myself. I need to go out and race more.

Well I have a framework for my Boston Marathon plan (yeah I did say I would talk about my marathon plan, but it has not been meshed with my schedule. I've got some great ideas nonetheless.) and from the looks of it, I probably won't start on that plan until June sometime. So until then I'm going to try to step out of my box and try to get in some races in the next few weeks.

Fire up the neurons. It's time to rewire again.