10K Saturday, v. 2.0

Yesterday we did the second annual "10K Saturday."  Last year's version was a blast, and this year's followed suit.

For last year's inaugural 10K practice we only had four skaters: me, Mel, Inliner Boy, and Cross Boy.  This year we managed to recruit almost twice as many: me, Mel, Inliner Boy, Cross Boy, Sprinter Boy, Aussie Boy, and Hawkeye Boy.  I'm not sure how many of them we'll actually convince to race the 10K in Milwaukee in two weeks, but it was fun to have a big group for the training skate.

Fun, and extremely helpful.  As it was last year, the weather this year was cold and windy--except this time we had a full-on headwind instead of a crosswind.  In addition, we had slow ice--it had snowed several inches the night before and the maintenance crew had removed (most of) the snow but hadn't put any water down with the Zamboni.  Having seven skaters meant lots of good draft and a lot of people to share the pulls through the wind and slow ice.

I'm clearly the slow skater of the group.  I'd use "I'm a girl" as my excuse but Mel is a girl and could have pulled all 25 laps and still dropped the rest of us so there goes that excuse.  I'd use "I'm old" but Hawkeye Boy is older than I am and a sprinter to boot, and he still kicks my butt.  Hmm, I guess I am the only one who is both old and female, so I'll go with that to explain why the group decided (correctly) to have me do one, two-lap pull to start of the 25 laps and then draft the rest of the way, while the fast folks split up the lead duties into four-lap pulls.

So I set off on my two.  Naturally I had my stopwatch in hand, ready to record each and every lap time to the tenth.  This drives Hawkeye Boy batty; he's one of those skaters who goes by feel and doesn't believe in timing things.  He's extremely fast so I know it works for him, but me--I need my data.

So I led my two laps, and was happy to see that the times--44.1 and 43.3 seconds--we well within the range I wanted (I had been thinking around 45-46 would be good).  And then, as the others took over one by one and did their pulls, I was happy to see that the laps mostly remained in that range--and I remained in the draft.  Last year Mel had done a 44 and a 43 and I had been unable to keep up; Cross Boy had had to jump in front of me and slow down the pace a bit so I could hang on.  And Mel had actually given me a slight push--twice--to help me close the gap to the skater in front of me.  This time, I even weathered an over-enthusiastic Hawkeye Boy lap of 42.8 without an issue.

It's different skating with other people; you can't just focus on getting your technique and pace perfect every lap because you have to constantly adjust your position to close the gap or back off from the skater in front of you.  So I don't think I was able to execute my new technique quite as well as I do when I'm solo...but I still think it was a huge factor in my being able to hang on to the group for faster laps than we did last year.

Or, hang on until lap 19, anyway. This is when Aussie Boy took the lead and the little bugger threw down a 42.2.  At this point in the skate that was definitely out of my league, and the pack dropped me.  I was on my own for the last six laps.  (And Aussie Boy's back cramped up a lap later and he had to drop out and couldn't finish the 10K).

So my last laps, solo, crept from 47 to 50 and then to 51 seconds...and then I managed to pull the times back down to 49, 48, and a fairly satisfying final lap of 46 seconds.  The total time, 19:06, was almost 30 seconds faster than last year's 19:35.

This is why I love my data.

So after that we did some accels until the ice time ended, and then Sprinter and Hawkeye convinced me to do some turncable work (off-ice turn skating practice) and then to run--2 miles for them, 1.5 for me because my left Achilles started hurting. And I couldn't resist timing a couple of my running laps, just to see what pace I was doing (9.5-10 minute miles).  And also to taunt Hawkeye a bit.

So 10K Saturday was a lot of work, a lot of fun, and a lot encouraging in terms of my upcoming 10K race.  Who could ask for more?