The doldrums

I was looking over the time splits from the route—not the mile by mile stuff, that’ll come later.

Here is the data feed from the website:

 

JOSEPH BREDA  (MAR)  | Bib #5728  |  HOUSTON, TX - USA  |  Age 30  |  M				MAPTRACK
START	6.2 Mile	13.1 Mile	18.6 Mile	FINISH
7:03:53 AM CST	1:09:02	2:27:54	3:41:15	05:30:58
TIME  Chip Time: 05:30:58  Clock: 05:35:04 Pace: 12:37  Placement  Overall: 4910  Gender: 3180  Division: 365

 

 

So, I start doing what I do and looking at the 4 segments and comparing them to each other and discovered that the 5.5 mile stretch between 13.1 and 18.6 was my worst stretch of the 4.  I was clearly hitting some kind of running equivalent of the doldrums at that point.

 

The ranking of the splits (best to worst):  1, 2, 4, 3.

I expected something different.

 

While I got progressively slower this year from start to finish—I “gave back” a full 30 minutes off my starting pace of 5:00:00—the stretch that I gave back the most time was the third split.  My pace went from 11:07 in the first segment to 11:25 in the second marking a slow down of :18.  In the 3^rd segment I ran a 13:20 mile pace, which is 1:54 slower than the second.  In the fourth I only gave back 1:06 from the previous segment.  So, as I slowed during the run, I slowed the most in the 3^rd segment.

Oddly enough, I don’t remember any physical problems during that segment—all of the physical problems came in the last part of the race AFTER the 30k mark. 

 

I just slowed down—a lot.  Maybe that’s all it was.

 

I would have thought the times would have told me something different.  In fact, I distinctly remember a wave of euphoria when I crossed the Westpark Hump.  When I crossed the top of that teeny-tiny hill I let out a good holler and the adrenaline was pumping.  It felt like I was surging past the point where I just couldn’t go on last year.  I saw the medical tent and the hydration stand that I distinctly remember last year behind a fog of desperation of the last fading shreds of hope and remember thinking “not this year”.  I thought that segment was going to be one of my best, not my worst.

 

I’m now extra curious to see what the mile-by-mile splits tell me.