10k Race - 38:51 - 3rd Age Group

Week of Oct. 6 ~ 12
44.5km / 27.6 mi.

Monday
No school due to typhoon in morning, but actually it was just a hard rain storm, and it cleared up at noon.
3:00 - 14k with 7 easy out, 7 hard in. 1:15:30, splits 45:38/31:51 @6:14/4:33/km.
Felt good coming back, helped by a (mostly) tailwind.
26C/79F, 45%
56.9kg

Tuesday
Weights and core at the gym.
57.3kg

Wednesday
7:30 club track workout. 12.5k with 1200, 1000 x 2, 800 x 3, 400.
4:54, 3:49, 49, 3:07, 10, 12, 85.
Felt ok. 1200 was warmup, Ran the 1000s well, eased up a bit on the 800s and 400.
Starting to taper for Sunday's race.
20C/68F, 65%
 57kg

Thursday
12:30 - 8k easy. Legs tired.
HS X-country meet. Before this year, no American School in Japan boy had ever broken 15:00 on the course (a hard, hilly 4.4km) - that's about 30 years. Today, we had 3 under 15:00 - quite amazing.

Friday
Rest. Gym workout.

Saturday
Rest.

Sunday
Nagareyama 10K road race. 38:51, 3rd in 60s age group out of 368 men. Overall 157 out of about 3,600 total. It was in Chiba prefecture, 2 hours travel from home.
I felt good and ran well. Knew there were two 60s ahead of me, but couldn't catch them (they started further ahead). They ran 37:45 and 38:14, so were well ahead. Thought I was in 3rd, but wasn't really thinking about it, was just trying to run a good time. Held back a bit the first 7k, then went harder, but even so the first 5k was faster than the second.
Splits: 3:46/57/51/48/49/52/4:05/54/56/53. Not sure why the 7th was slow - there was a hill and I guess I slowed a bit. Worked hard the last 3k, mostly running alone.
My goal was to run in the 38s and win the age group or at least be in the top 3, so was happy to accomplish that.
Course was pretty flat, a few short hills, nothing difficult. Weather was perfect - 21C/70F, no wind.
This was a really good race from all viewpoints (except I only got a medal and a small towel), I wish I had known about it in previous years.
Next year I'll go back and run 38:00.
But in order to do that, I have to think about my training. The race effort was really much harder than anything I do in training. Of course, that will always be the case, but...it should be "harder", not "MUCH harder." I need to do more to prepare for race efforts. Maybe I will take an extra day off - Friday - and go harder on Saturday. Instead of 3k intervals, do a hard 10k effort. Or a hard/long hill workout.
I have a half marathon next month (16th), which I think is going to be very tough.