Somehow an empty feeling

Today I entered the Nike Marathon Test 1 (10K) in Copenhagen with an objective to run below 40 mins. Unfortunately we have had, for the first time in many years, a real winter in Denmark - lots of snow and ice. The volunteers at the race had done a great job "cleaning up" the track - but due to the weather conditions it was only an estimated track length and there was some uncertainty about the track length except it was for certain longer than 10K.

I felt ok today - the last two exercises had been discouraging, but I felt good, and I has a healthly portion of adrenaline in my body when the race started. The first 5K went well - I was a little disappointed with the 4min pacers, we ran 10 secs behind schedule on every kilometer, so at 5K we were approx 30 sec behind a schedule to finish at 40mins.

But then the pacers started to increase the speed, and I started have a real challenge keeping the pace. And after 6.5K I slowly had to let them go. I had hoped for a little more fighting spririt, but I just couldn't find it.

After 10K I finished in 41m54s - 1 whole min slower than my New Year race - really disappointing.

But I was not the only one - a large majority of runners had slower finishing time than expected. Probably due to the track conditions (still slippery and a lot of snow) and then the "uncertainty" about the track length.

So there was probably something about it, but it is not an excuse.. I want to run faster, so I have to continue and next goal is Nike Marathon Test 2 (15K) in 1h01m - real challenging considering I can't run 10K in 40 mins.

After today I am left with an empty feeling of not knowing if I did run faster than my clock said and did a good job, or I totally failed today..  Well I have to continue and hopefully when the snow melts and we get some better running conditions and a new race is on the schedule, I will know a little more..   until then:

"The triumph can't be had without the struggle.” (Wilma Rudolph)