Yikes

The small little 1:50 pace group that started out with three people (one myself, one my sis, and one a gal slower than me) has suddenly grown to Really Good athletes! Yikes!!! What have I gotten myself into?

Tuesday was okay. We did hill training. Which everyone knows involves doing laps. After a couple of years of weekly hill training for 1 hour on the daunting Mt Coot-tha, this was rather tame by comparison! The hill took me approximately 1min30sec to get to the top. Note I don't say "bottom to top", because we didn't actually start on the bottom.
And instead of doing 1 hour of constant repeats, we did 3 repeats! Well, the half marathon group did 3 repeats, while the marathon group did 4 repeats. Since I've been missing a few runs, I decided to do a bonus run up the hill with the marathon group. I forgot how exhausting hill repeats are!!! If you think of it, 1.5min x 4 = 6min. So I was only doing about 6minutes of intense cardio. But my legs were shaking and my lungs were burning. I rarely got passed on the way up but was consistently passed on the way down. Most of the people in my group were taking the hill slow and steady. Me? I've been trained that hill repeats mean sprint up the hill and recover on the way down, so up I sprinted, and down I staggered. Repeatedly

Wednesday was a big Challenge. This was when all these super fast athletes decided to join my group for a 4k tempo run. My best 4k tempo run pace this year is around 5.08. Yet the tempo pace I was supposed to lead was 4.45-4.57min. Hmmm. I whispered to my sis that I was planning to go a bit slower, since I couldn't hold the faster pace. She gave me an "Are You Crazy?" look and told me aloud, "of coooooourse you can run that fast. Just give it a try!"
Ha! If only I weren't in the habit of listening to my older, sometimes wiser sister.
I planned to keep around the 5.00 pace mark. And then the 2-hour pace group set off before me and they were so fast. My competitive nature got the best of me and I decided to show them fast! (Yes, you can see where this all starts to spiral downhill...)
The first km I ran a blistering 4.51min/km. As a reference point, when I did 1k repeats last year with a long rest break in between, 4.45-4.50 was my average on each km.
The second km I ran at 4.56min/km. Slower, but still on target!
I maintained this another half km or so. And then in dismay I saw the pace on my watch creeping up: 5.01...5.03...5.04...
I gasped to Heather and the nearest runner to keep that pace, since I knew I was fading. They strongly encouraged me "no way, you're doing great!" and then blistered on ahead. The next three runners responded in a similar way when I told them to follow my sis and the other guy if they wanted to maintain the correct pace. "No thanks, we like your pace! It's too hot to go faster!" And off they sprinted as I dropped farther, and farther back.
The two hour pacer breezed by me with less than 500m to go. He encouraged me to stick with him, but I just couldn't. I had eaten way too much dinner, my legs were sore from the hills the day before and - let's all be honest here - I had [once again] started off way too fast!
But on the bright side, I set a kick-ass pace for over half the distance, I kept to my own personal tempo pace goal of sub-5.15min average (At the finish my gps watch told me I'd averaged 5.11min/km. Woohoo!). And I got to remind myself - once again - why running negative splits is so much better than starting out too fast and burning up halfway through. Will I ever learn?