Finally, the travelling is done--for a while, at least. After spending 15 of the first 25 days of summer in places other than home, I'm ready to get into a routine for a few weeks. Fortunately I didn't miss many workouts during all this travel, and my most recent trip--to the cabin for the family work weekend--coincided with my skating "easy week," so I didn't miss any workouts at all this past week. (For those hoping for my standard "cabin vacation pictures of my parents' four dogs" post--I forgot to take any pictures this time. Oops.)
Anyway, despite not missing many workouts so far this summer, and despite my thyroid continuing to behave itself, and despite feeling like my workouts are going pretty well this summer...I am slow. Really slow. And if I had any doubts about my slowness, I efficiently removed them last Wednesday at my first Summer Inline Series oval races.
The Summer Inline Series races have been around since at least the early '90's; I think I first raced them in 1994. Attendance back then was huge--sometimes as many as 50 people showed up to race on Wednesday nights (I'm pretty sure that my first full season of SIS races contributed to my fear of pack style racing--nothing like toeing the line with 10-15 men (they didn't divide by gender back then) who have more speed and aggression than skating skill to make you head straight for the back of the pack where things are relatively safe). In 2013, the SIS races are a much more intimate gathering--usually under 20 people. Columbian Flash, the guy who runs the races, is a very talented inliner and he dispenses coaching and advice to the skaters as well as putting on some fun events. He's also very open to changing races upon request--so when he announced that the women (all both of us) would be doing a 5K, about five different reasons to whine for something shorter popped into my head.
It's my first race of the season. I haven't even skated 5K continuously in a workout, much less racing. Of the workouts I've missed, most have been tempos/race pace. It's hot. 5K sounds scary.
I consider it a monumental mental victory that I shoved all these thoughts to the back of my mind, smiled, and told Columbian Flash "5K sounds great."
As it turned out, my concerns were not unfounded. The race went OK--and by that I mean that I didn't quit--but I was slow. My goal had been to do as close to 45 second laps as possible; this seemed relatively conservative, since my personal best in this distance features laps that average 41.5 seconds.
Of course, that was back in 2008.
In 2013, apparently, "as close to 45 second laps as possible" translates to doing one lap under 45 seconds in a 5K. The other 11 laps ranged from 46 to a lovely 50. I do know that some of the "slow" was mental, because after seeing the 50 at lap 9, I pulled it back down to 48's and a 47 for the remaining three laps. And I'm hoping that some of the "slow" was because race day was my fourth day of hard skating in a row (since I had to cram all my workouts in before heading to the cabin). Still, I'm pretty sure that some of the "slow" is attributable to "that's just the way things are now."
Anyway, I won't have to wait long to find out, because the SIS races happen again tomorrow night--and I told Columbian Flash, when he asked last week what we women would like to do in the future for our races, that a 3K and a 5K each night might be nice...
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