Baby's first race!
I did my first Nordic race last Tuesday.
I came in dead last as you can see by the results. I knew that would happen. I wasn't even trying to win. I just wanted to finish (as having "DNF" next to your name to me is worse than a shitty time).
Notice how I was 22 minutes behind the second last person to finish. That actually wasn't as bad as I thought, but needless to say, I was ultra paranoid that the timing guy was going to run off before I'd finished, thinking I'd bailed sometime during the race, just because I was so crazy far behind the pack. There were a couple people cooling down as I was still going, and I told them to run back to the lodge to tell the timing guy I was still going!! hahaha
I have to say though, I kind of liked being dead last, because then I wasn't competing against anyone. I wasn't going to cry because I was half a second behind someone crossing a line. My only competition was myself, and I won. There were lots of times where I thought "This is awesome, I could do this all day!" and then there were times where I thought "Finish, finish, don't you dare fucking stop!" The negative thoughts didn't really persist much at all, but were there when I was just tired and lazy.
So that race was 6.4 km, and based on my time, my average speed was 6.9 km/h. Comparing this to my results that I've been keeping track of on my own, I am actually getting faster. When the season started, my average speed was 4.9 km/h. A difference of 2 km/h in less than a month. That's pretty sizable!!
To check for consistency in my own timing, I made sure to time runs in multiple directions, as going "up" a run is obviously going to be slower than going "down" a run. But now I'm just going to time myself doing the standard lap that is used for the Tuesday Night Race Series more often than not.
Now my only decision is, do I do the 10 km recreational, or the 20 km, at the Cariboo Marathon? I was going to do the 10 km, but my instructor seems to think I could knock off the 20 km easily. I can do 2 laps of the standard loop fine (8.6 km), but to do nearly 5 laps of the standard loop with NO BREAK seems a bit intense. Though the terrain would be WAY different...not nearly as hilly. I don't want to do something too easy, but I also don't want to go way beyond my capacity. I don't know if 20 km would be pushing myself too much, or if 10 km would be too within my means.
Decisions decisions!