Thursday, October 27, 2011

MAGIC SHOES

So it was 10km time again and after running a 36:55 10 days ago I thought I had a good shot at 36:30...

Now when you want to run fast, what do you do? You call in help... HELP... and what do I use for help? Magic shoes (do any of you guys have magic shoes?).


Back in 1997 Dawn and I went to the USA for a little holiday (a story for another day) and like any runner we ended up walking into a little running shop (could it be called Kellys or something like that, it was between YN and Boston but that's not important) and started looking around... at shoes. I was a Nike person back then and this pair of zoom lights caught my eye, and said: I'll make you run fast!!! So I bought them...

Tonight I pulled on the 14 year old shoes and the rest, well the rest was just great... After a couple of km warmup I lined up with the 1519 other people. I didn't expect fire works, but had spoken to Graham on the line to see who was there and I knew if things went well I could sneak in a top 3 (40+).
I didn't set off like a bullet, but still past the 1st km in 3:28, I was running to fast, 3:40 was the target... 3:26 for 2km and I knew I was in trouble.

So what does one do if you are running to fast... slow down? Right, NO I just kept it there 3:35 (up the hill) 3:31  3:26 17:28 for 5km. At this stage I was toast and told Johan, whohad been running with me, to go, but I ran him down, and with the first lady now in our sights I took charge!!! 3:30 3:24  3:24  this was down the hill we had climbed earlier and I had taken the foot off the gas and was coasting really I was waiting to blow!!! 3:27 I caught one of my boys and told him to tuck in for the last km and if we could hold it together we would break 35min. I pushed for home leaving Him and Johan behind... I wanted my 35. 3:23, but the race is only over when you cross the finish line 0:16 (34:56)!!!!!!!! (my splits are from Mr. Garmin)

Can't believe it, where did that come from? was it the shoes or the 2 and a half weeks of training....?

Wish I could wear them for my marathon!!!

3 comments:

  1. Wow, great pace! Those shoes definitely look low profile!

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  2. Wow, that's awesome!! I run that fast in my dreams. I love how my racing spikes allow me to run so fast, but I couldn't imagine running them for much longer than a 5k. They are so hard on my feet!

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  3. WOW FAST!
    And all these fools who are always talking about their super fancy modern expensive shoes...and you did it on shoes that are over a decade old!

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