Signs of good things to come

I can now wholeheartedly recommend actually training for a Half Marathon. 

I was surprised at how nervous I was for this race.  I'd had three less than optimal runs this week that didn't do much for my confidence.  Saturday was all about the details:  what to wear, how to use my watch, what time to arrive.  Luckily, I have a very detail-oriented coach who loves getting into this stuff.  Seriously, we were discussing the blend of polyester and spandex in my tights to determine whether or not they would be appropriate for the slightly warmer than anticipated temperatures (they were).  And he gave me the ok to use not just the virtual partner, but also the advanced workouts in my garmin (so I could have a visual on pace and an auditory alert if my heart rate exceeded the prescribed zone for each portion of the race).

Sunday morning with my wardrobe approved and my watch programmed, I felt ready.  I got to the race course early, and got a great parking spot.  The race began and ended at the Newton South High School, which was great to have a structure to wait in and indoor plumbing!  I caught up with a few friends, and before long it was 7:05, time to warm up.  I ran my 16 minute warm up, ate a gel, drank some water and headed for the start line. 

Despite having finely tuned my garmin, as I was attempting to lock the bezel, I managed to start the watch.  I think about 30 seconds elapsed by the time I realized this and stopped it.  I didn't have time to reset the watch, so I just restarted it when the gun went off.  This meant that when I started running, I was already well behind my virtual partner.  I tried to stay a consistent number of seconds behind the VP.

And that worked until I got to the first hill.  You see, This course covers some of the heart break hill area from the Boston Marathon.  I've heard it referred to as the Chilly Hilly Half.  I was prepared for the "big hill" at 5.6 miles, but there was still a fair bit of "undulation" before you got there.  I decided as I floated down a hill, pulling my VP back to 10 seconds ahead of me that this was ok.  Having an average 7:45 was the goal, I can't expect to go the same speed uphill as downhill, and I might as well take advantage of the free speed on the downhill.

Touring some expensive neighborhoods in the western suburbs of Boston, the miles peeled off. It was mile 10, and I was feeling pretty good, but also getting a bit anxious to be done.  I wanted to pick up the pace, but of course the plan was to stick to the 7:45s til 11.1.  And I was very glad that I did.  I picked it up at 11 and started passing people, only to hit one last hill at 12 that allowed some one to pass me back.  Ok, none of that, keep picking people off.  Just as the finish line came into view, a woman sprinted up next to me.  No way.  I dig deep, find my last ounce of effort, and sprint past her, finishing 2 seconds ahead.

I came in in 1:40:02.  Two minutes faster than my goal and over six minutes improvement on my previous PR.  And 10th in my age group out of 154.  This race gives me a lot of confidence for the coming season.

Of course in every race, there are things that you could do better, in this one, I did not negative split.  As best I can tell I ran 49:55 for the first half and 50:04 in the second (oh, and according to my watch the course was short by about a tenth of a mile).  And the first half of the course had more climbs (247 ft versus 146 ft), so that only accentuates my getting slower over the race. 

My shin felt ok throughout the race.  Not recovered, but it didn't bother me.  In fact, right now the thing that's bothering me most is my left hip.  Maybe it was all the climbing or descending, but it's very sore.  Regardless, both will have 3 weeks to recover with no running as I take a break to try to get back to injury-free running.

Chilly Half Race Plan

The Newton Chilly Half is just 5 days away.  It will be my seventh half marathon, and the first that I've really trained for.  You see, three of those half marathons were part of half ironmans.  Totally different game.  My first half, back in Australia was just after I had moved to Brisbane, I used it as an excuse to keep myself training, but I think I only did one ten mile run in preparation.  Then two BAA Half Marathons, each on the tail ends of tri seasons where I was taking some time off from training, but not racing.  The danger of half marathons is that they are just short enough that I feel like I can just go out and run it without training.

Not so this time.  That is not the Coach Alan way.  I've been training for 9 weeks with increasing distance each week, starting around 7 miles, topping out around 11.

Race starts at 7:30, it's gonna be about 35 degrees then with winds around 10 mph.  I'm planning on wearing the same gear as the Devils Chase.  Brief warmup.  I'm gonna be racing at a 7:45 pace (hopefully with my virtual partner on my Garmin if I can get everything working right) with heartrate varying with the HILLS. 

That's right, this course has several of the hills from the Boston Marathon itself.  So, yeah there's that.

My current Half Marathon PR is 1:46.  I'm feeling pretty confident I can beat that.  If I hold my 7:45s, I'll come in at 1:42.

Finally, the most important part of the half marathon:  the BPC Brunch.  No training can prepare me for that.  See you on the course.

BAA Half Race Report: it's better with friends

Since the Duxbury race, I've definitely been in my off season. Sure I did a half marathon last weekend, and I've got an olympic distance race in Australia next weekend, but I've been treating it like the off season. Which means I've cut back to about 3 - 6 hours of exercise per week, and I've upped my ice cream intake significantly.

I showed up to the BAA Half Marathon last weekend with relatively low expectations. The Pumpkinman run gave me some confidence that I could do a pretty good time in this race, but I haven't done a half mara on its own since this race last year, so I was a little anxious, but not nervous going in.

Rachel and I did some pre-race warm ups, then headed to the line for the porta potties. This was my one complaint about the race. They did not have enough bathrooms. We waited for about 15 minutes in a line and still weren't even close. Rachel gave up and headed for the bushes, and I should have followed suit, but I thought, eh, I'll be fine.

About 2 miles in, I hear from behind me "Hey, I thought I recognized that ponytail." It's Nathaniel, Paul's roommate from Notre Dame. Nathaniel is faster than me. He runs marathons, but he had told me he was planning on running 8:30s, but now, apparently, he's feeling good. So we start running together and we're holding 7:55 - 8. In the back of my mind I'm thinking, I've never broken 50 minutes for a 10K before, if we keep this pace up... And there's the 10K mark, we've just run it in 49:14. Killer! But I hope that doesn't mean that I'll blow up for the full distance.

Now I start thinking about a sub-1:50. That would be pretty spectacular given that my fastest time was a 1:53:10. The second half of the course is a lot more uphill though, so I try not to get ahead of myself. Still we're pulling in low 8s: 8:04, 7:59, 8:02. We hit the 10 mile mark with a sub-1:20 time. Nathaniel turns to me and says, "if you've got 10 min miles left in you, you're gonna break 1:50!"

At mile 11, Nathaniel decides he's gonna see how much he's got left. I thank him for the pacing, and immediately drop back to an 8:33 mile. Hmm, that's ok, I've got buffer, it's just so much harder to push the pace when you're not trying to keep up with some one. Mile 12, only 1.1 to go. Geez, I've got to pee. But, it's only 1 more mile, you can hold it. 20 more paces, Ack! I can't hold it! I run behind a tree for a quick pit stop. So that added 30 seconds to my time.

Back to the race, and I'm ready for this thing to be over. We run around the grand stands and finally into the stadium where we finish off with half a lap. 1:46:26. Sweet!

I grab water, food, and t-shirt and look around for Nathaniel to no avail. I head back in to watch Jeff and Rachel finish their races. Rachel all smiles with an 8 minute PR!

Two big takeaways from this race:
1. I run better with friends, and I need to learn how to push myself like that on my own.

2. Make sure you pee right before the start of the race.

Stay tuned, next post will be from oz!

Race Report: BAA Half Marathon

In keeping with my "who needs training" philosophy, I ran the BAA Half Marathon this past weekend without running longer than a 10K practice run. My final time was 1:53:09, so almost spot on with my first half marathon. Though in actuality this one was about 2.5 minutes slower, since I didn't stop to pee 4K in.

The extension of my "who needs training " attitude leads to forgetfulness for the race itself. Sunday morning I forgot to change out the laces in my shoes. This sounds funny, but for tri's a wear elastic laces, and the previous weekend I had had issues with the right one loosening. I was able to force them closed, so it wasn't that big of a deal in the end. I also managed to forget my pre-race water bottle, my post-race snack and my sunnies. To be fair, it's tough to remember sunnies when it's still night outside when you leave the house, but I really did look at my visor and think, I need to bring that, then promptly left without it.

One thing I didn't forget was my ipod. Other races have rules against ipods, and this one does too: you can't win the race wearing an ipod. Since there's a very low risk of that I opted for the tunes. Getting to the start line, I pop in the headphones and hit play. Mmm, great song... that is not on my ipod. Turns out I had grabbed Paul's ipod (they are exactly the same model - why did I get him a different color?) So it was sorta like having Paul run along with me. Biggest surprise on the playlist: the Devil went down to Georgia. Loved it.

The race started near fenway and wound it's way along the parks of Boston's Emerald Necklace to the Franklin Park Zoo. We even did a small loop through the zoo. I didn't see any animals there, but I did note that we ran along the "outback trail," which made me smile.

What does one think about for two hours of running? I do math. I know, not a huge surprise, right? But I find that my poor ability to do math in my head is severely hampered when I'm running. This means that math can distract me for quite a while. So, I manage my watch, compute splits, convert to metric, convert back. (There is something that makes 10 miles seem so much closer to 13.1 miles than 16K does to 21K.) And though I was ready to be done running around mile 9, I maintained a really consistent pace between 8:25 and 8:30 minute miles.

Finally, two days after the half marathon my knees hurt. In fact going into the race my left knee was hurting (I blame sitting at my desk so much with this broadband paper). But coming out of the race it was the IT band connections to the knee that really killed me. Now that's settled down, left knee is still sore, but I'm pretty happy about that. Why? Cause my shins don't hurt. I ran 21K and not even a twinge. I don't think I'll ever be 100% shin splint-free, but I think having some really long recovery has made a lot of difference.

Race Report: Gold Coast Half Marathon

I did not train as well as I could have for the half marathon. Between travel and shin splints, I just didn't do as many Ks. But last week I ran 16Ks in prep, and I sorta reckoned that it would take me 2 hours, which is an hour short of what a tri took me, so I could probably run for the long.

Last night, I tried to get to sleep early. I watched a movie, had a beer, and went to bed at 9:30. At 10pm my neighbors sounded like they had moved their party onto my balcony. It sounded like a good time, if I hadn't had to get up at 4am. When I finally did get to sleep, it was fretful. The movie was a thriller, and I kept having nightmares that someone had stolen my license. And I kept waking up worrying that I would sleep through my alarm.

I had forgotten to pick up my number last week, so when I got to the course, I needed to find registration. The start was at 6:30. So at 6:05 it was still dark, and registration was not easy to find. By the time I got my number, it was 5 min til the start, not enough time to get into the queue for the loo. OK, fine, there will be toilets on the course.

7000 people ran the half marathon this morning. The start was just packed. When the gun went off, I wasn't even on the course, I was on the other side of a barrier. Slowly, we hopped over the barrier, and walked toward the start. They had music playing. When I crossed, the song "Running" (by Kiwi band Evermore) was playing, there was a little downhill and I could see the field of runners stretching out in front of me for what looked like miles already.

Generally, I find the first 5K of a run the hardest, then things start to settle in, I find my cadence and my breath, and then I feel like I can just keep going. This morning, maybe because there were so many people in the field that it took a lot of time to get up to speed, I felt good right off the start. I caught up to the 2 hour pace setters (they carry balloons!), and felt fast, so I passed them. Besides, I was still gonna have to stop to visit the loo somewhere along the course.

At 4K, I found my pit stop. I lost 2.5 minutes in the queue, but definitely better than it would have been had I waited at the start. The 2h balloons were a minute ahead of me when I rejoined the field, so I tried to keep them in my sights, and re-pass people I had passed in the start. At 6K the rain started. It was just a drizzle, but it was a cold drizzle and it was enough to get the shoes wet through and through.

The course turned and across the sky there was a rainbow. Not just a little wedge of rainbow like you get in the states. It arced across the entire sky touching the horizon twice. And the rain stopped.

The first 12K of the race just felt great. In fact, I forgot to look at my time when crossing the halfway mark. At that point it started to get hard. There was no sign for the 14K mark which messes with your head when you're trying to focus on pealing off the K's. At the 17K mark things started to hurt. But I also realized I was going to finish in less than 1:55. I started focusing on how many Ks to go (which my math brain seems to turn off when I'm running so it was somewhere between 6 and 3K depending on when you ask me). At 18K, I could feel the blisters coming up. At 19K, I began counting my breaths to pull myself through.

And then, it was over. 1 hour, 53 minutes and 46 seconds after I started, I was finished. I crossed the line, got my water and banana, my medal and my tshirt.

In a few days, I'll stop waddling. In a week, the blisters will callus. And in a few months, I'll run another half, sub 1:50.