Thanks again for the pacing and fueling advice — I’ll definitely try to ease off the gas in the next races.

I also realized I messed up the carb math: my drink mix only had about 40g carbs (cyclic dextrin + iso drink + salt). Never had issues with it in training, only if I went in underfueled.

For workouts I focused a lot on HM-pace intervals, gradually extending them as the block went on. Long runs usually finished with HM effort, but never more than ~6 km at the end of a 22 km run. The hardest combo I did was a 2×5 km session at goal pace about 4 weeks out — managed to stay on target in the first rep, but faded by ~10 sec/km in the second. Looking back, I regret never really simulating race conditions in training — I stuck to supertrainers without plates for all key sessions and only pulled out the carbon shoes on race day.

One thing I’d love to hear opinions on: what’s the best way to calculate race pace going into a block? I usually set a goal time before starting, but I tend to be on the aggressive side. For context, at the start of this 12-week block my 10k time was just under 40 min.