I've got an upcoming 15km competitive event coming up
I can run 15km. I have proven this many times in my own runs where I do 10k consecutively then will walk/run another 5k that as I have mentioned, I only stop at that point because I am out of water. In the upcoming organized race, there will be hydration stations all over the place so this will be the first time that we can see what this old body of mine is capable of without the limitation of running out of agua.
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This is one of those events where you have to register and wear a number and they have events before and after it an all that. There are going to be people attending from around the world that are going to just blow me away as far as their speed is concerned but I am obviously not going to try to keep up with them because I couldn't do so if my life depended on it. I am in a race against only one person in this. I'm running against me. I plan on doing what I do in my personal runs, which is to just focus on my heart rate and not exceed a certain level.
The major thing that I am going to be focusing on here is to never stop to do a walk. I want to, I mean I am going to, be jogging the entire time. One limiting factor for me is that headphones are banned and all the runs I have done to train for something like this has been with my tunes on. I don't know why they are banned but I'm not going to screw with the rules.
For me I would like to be able to maintain 7.5 minutes per kilometer for the entire 15 km. This will put me way behind the people that are truly good at this of course, as they probably walk that fast and are aiming to move at twice that speed.
If you've done any event like this before you probably already know what I am about to say but they ask you to organize yourself into various portions based on ability. They don't want the slightly overweight guys like me up front getting in the way of the Ethiopians who can run a marathon in under 3 hours. I elected to put myself in the 3rd wave out of 4 total waves. The last wave is for people who are going to walk the entire thing or something along those lines. I don't recall exactly what the criteria was for these things but they did indicate that if you were impeding your wave that you may be asked by race officials to step to the side. I think that would be very annoying if people were trolling and asked to be in a wave they don't belong in but in today's times I am sure that someone would do exactly that even though they have to pay to be part of this run.
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The event is called "Frozen Toes" and apparently they do these things all over the United States. This is the first time that I have participated in a group cold run, and I am really looking forward to it. I have done a couple of organized runs in the past and the community spirit is a good one. I'm one of those guys that gives a thumbs up to everyone that I encounter who is also running along the lake on my regular runs, so it will be nice to be around what is probably going to be around a thousand people that are all there for the same reason.
I always say that I am "in to complete, not to compete." I may end up pushing myself a bit harder than I normally would but I do recall that when I was doing the triathlon years ago that people would constantly motivate other participants saying things like "you got this buddy! let's keep it going!" It's much easier to not give up when you are surrounded by like minded people.
One thing I don't want to do though is to over exert myself to the point of danger. I know my comfortable heart-rate zones and I am not going to exceed them. I have never run a consecutive 15km and my only real goal here is to not stop to walk or rest at all during the entire thing. I normally can run a 10k in about 1 hour and 15 minutes, so finishing in under 2 hours should be very doable. I do not know if the terrain is flat though. Considering that almost all of the surrounding area is flat I would imagine that it will be though.
This will mark the first time I have entered an event ever since transitioning from weights to cardio though and I am looking forward to it. I am not nervous at all.