How Lance Does It

Stuart Stokes, fellow Lance Armstrong super fan parted with his favourite book giving it to me as a fairwell presant when out in Morocco. The book is called 'how Lance does it' and is a great book, in there he states (among other great advice!) 'never be afraid to demand the best of people around you even if you fail'.

He tells a story of how he demanded the biggest support team, biggest budget and best cyclist available to get him an Olympic Gold medal....he failed in his attempt but not for trying. He stood up at the post event dinner and thanked everyone for their efforts and apologised for not winning a medal but he said he didn't regret asking for what he did. Obviously the fear of losing sometimes means you don't ask for certain things in case you don't then achieve the goal and look stupid but as Lance says you have to give yourself every opportunity because you can't then turn around thinking "if I had just asked for that".

I have usually followed this and sometimes taken a bit of flack but who cares as I believe what Lance is saying is right which leads me to this weekends 5k at Sport City. I am a fan of what the BMC does but have only taken part in one other event of there's so I am a novice to this but I find the entry system a bit weird!

When entering you have to state your target time which I did (honestly) and that put me in the 'B' race which I was disappointed with as the reason for me going all that way was to go up against some of the best and see where I am at the moment, I also believed the time I have run 10 months ago and put down to run Saturday should be good enough.

It seems from stats below my personal best is in the middle of the field so how come I didn't get in??...have people put down times they can't run, if so should I just lie next time and put 13.30 to make sure I am in the 'A' race. I spoke to fellow RunnersLife athlete briefly last night and told him I was disappointed about being in the 'B' race and he said "do you think you can run 65sec laps then?"  (This is the set pace of the race) which I said "No, but apart from Andy Vernon who out of the other 18 runners has??" The answer is no one, Merrien is next with 13.57, while 65s laps would give you 13.44.

Below are the personal bests of the runners in the 'A' race so I don't think I was being unreasonable asking to be moved to the 'A' race, luckily and thanks to help from Dave Norman and Steve Mosley I have been moved up to the race I wanted. This leads me back to the line of 'Don't ever be afraid to ask more from the people around you'.

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Personal Best by the athletes in the 'A' 5k race.

13.45

13.57

14.00

14.00

14.00

14.02

14.08

14.09

14.11 {my personal best}

14.13

14.13

14.14

14.16

14.18

14.19

14.27

3 runners are 1500m runners and haven't run a 5k to near potential.

3.46

3.49

3.53

65 per lap pace = 13minutes 44seconds

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It is yet to be seen if I will prove the decision to be right but if I do come last and way off the back I will apologise and thank them for their help.

Simx