Woke up naturally a few minutes before my alarm, always a good sign around 04:28. This was a day where I really didn’t know what I was going to do when I got out of bed and could have gone a lot of different ways.
I had 100mg MEG and maurten bicarb w/ a breakfast of toast and two stroop waffles and coffee. Headed over to Polichaski and started the warmup just before 07:00
Felt good on the clockwork warmup and because I’d felt decent all morning, I was cautiously optimistic. I’d told myself the same thing last time that I was thinking about going for the FKT, i.e. that I would keep the effort controlled and I would check in at the 3 or 4 important splits in the first half and if I was behind pace, I would split it up and just do it as an interval workout from checkpoint to checkpoint (each section being 8-12 min).
I felt quite good running through the forest and I think I let out an audible yip when I hit the 1K in 6’09 -- about 15 seconds faster than last time. I think I said something to myself like “oh we’re having a day.”
I kept on up the steep grass hill and hit that under 11’00. The next important split was the “5K” at the flat turn (the ~5m of flat on the entire course). I’d hit this in 15’15 when I ran 49’19 and so it translates to very close to a 5K split in a 10 mile, which is how I think about this. I could see I was moving really well and was going to be under 15’00 and split my watch there at 14’39. This is where I really started to think that I was not just have a good day, but a great day and that sub 49 was in the cards.
The next split was the halfway log (a bit short of half-way, time-wise). I still felt strong and passed the log for the first time ever under 23’00 (I think I’d been 23’25 last time and I was 22’50 or so this time). I actually managed to get a gel out of my pocket (100mg caff maurten gel) and take that right after this, as I was a bit worried I’d gone out too hot.
Still, I hit the 10KSch mark just before the carwash well under 30’00, I think even under 29’00, and was then right at 31’00 at the entrance to the carwash, where I split my watch again. My carwash was actually the slowest segment of the day relatively speaking -- I was about 15 seconds slower than my last FKT through that section for whatever reason -- but then I felt very, very strong and PR’d on every segment in the final chunk.
I cannot overstate how good I’ve felt on this last piece of this route and how much faster I’ve been able to run. This is, I think, a huge demonstration of the importance of strength and consistency. It’s also a good sign to see the HR spike back up in these last 8 minutes, which shows that I wasn’t running out of gas, but was pushing muscularly and cardiovascularly. I knew I had it once I hit the last “mile” and it was really just about whether I could go sub-49, and I pushed every second to hit it.
In the end it was 48’48 on my watch (48’39 for the official segment).
I was tremendously stoked and it was also sunny and beautiful, so hung around up there for a while and then jogged down very slow.
Total 13km 1h27, 1169m+
Splits:
1.81 0'14'39 (2'50.7) 334 158
0.63 0'8'07 (2'59.0) 209 164
0.56 0'8'14 (3'15.3) 197 163
0.52 0'9'37 (3'42.8) 207 161
1.27 0'8'07 (2'57.7) 147 163