From: Donovan Rebbechi (abuse@aol.com)
Subject: race report: the negative splits classic
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 23:12:50 +0000 (UTC)

Coming off a 1 week break to deal with overtraining problems, and having only
been back to it for 2 days, I was going to skip this race. But I got up this
morning, observed the perfect weather outside (conditions about 45 degrees f,
not too windy) and thought to myself -- "if I ran today, this really will be 
my day". Could just sense that it was going to be good. I'd already registered,
and my fiancee was in it, so I was going anyway. So I put on my race clothes
and headed out.

One of the guys from my racing team who's reasonably well matched with me was
there. This guy's one of the "older and wiser" types of runners. Had the most
consistent splits in the tempo run we did 9 days ago (+- 1 sec). 

Background on this -- October 26, I'd run a 5 miler in 32:12, splits 6:15,6:31,
6:34,6:42. So I badly wanted negative splits today. The plan was to match the
projected time from the 5 miler in the first split and do 6:20 for the first
mile.

So went out very slowly, held myself back. Every man and his dog, it seemed,
raced ahead of me in the first mile, though I overtook some in the second half
of the first mile. I just ignored the noise and focused on maintaining an easy
pace. Breathing rhythm 3-3-2. A bit like breathing every 6 steps except you
inhale on alternate foot landings and it has a nice 4/4 rhythm. The first 
mile had a tough hill on it, so I ran it carefully.  The guy from my running
club joined me, and we ran together to the first mile marker.

First split: 6:20. I was feeling happy, almost like I'd won the race already. 
It really was my day. Kept the same pace/effort. My teammate and I continued to
run together, sometimes swapping places. I knew I didn't want to get too far 
out from him, so if I was ahead, I'd make sure he wasn't too far behind. 
Greated Global near the end of mile 2. 

Second split: 5:57. That was a tad fast -- I was starting to wonder if I'd get
those negative splits. But I'd done that mile on the easy 3-3-2 breathing 
pattern, and was still feeling very good. So mile 3 began. This is where I
wanted to make my "move". Mile 3 contained 3 hills, none of them are enormous 
hills, but it's the toughest part of the course. I switched to 2-2 gear, and
pushed hard, overtaking a lot of runners, especially up the hills. My teammate
just took off at an incredible speed, I didn't try to match it and let him go.

Third split: 6:01. Slower than the second split, but considering the hills, 
this was by a long way the strongest of my three splits. Mile 4 was a long 
downhill. The plan: to hold myself together and finish. The downhill was 
on my side, I maybe made up a couple of places. There were a couple of runners
who'd saved their big move for mile 4, and ran past me, but there were a few
who were spent. A club member helped me near the finish by yelling some 
encouragement (I hope that doesn't count as "assistance".) 

Last split: 6:11. Total time: 24:30. Half splits: 12:17/12:12 = 5 seconds 
negative. Average pace: 6:07.5 compared to 6:26 for the 5 miler. 4 mile PR and
best race this year.

Reflections: 
(1) The slow first mile appears to have helped, even in a fairly short race. 
(2) I think this decisvely proves that people like Bob Grumbine and Doug Freese
who argued that complete rest before a race works well were right. I could 
actually feel this morning that I was ready to run fast, there's no doubt that
the rest had a major role in this race.  No speed work for 9 days, and the last
week consisted of 2 easy runs the two days before the race, and some cross
training on the elliptical. The biggest single training event in the month 
between the two events was the resting.

Cheers and thanks for reading,
-- 
Donovan Rebbechi
http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/