Pre Race

Race weekend started on Friday evening with a steak dinner celebrating my sister Allison’s birthday. Steak isn’t exactly carbo loading food but I had enough mashed potatoes and chocolate cake to make up for that. Unfortunately, I had a fitful night of sleep on Friday which left me feeling a bit sluggish on Saturday morning. We had tickets to first round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament Saturday evening. The games were at 5 and 7:30 pm and since the stadium doesn’t have the greatest selection of food we decided to have dinner in the mid afternoon. So I had raw veggies with dip and pizza at about 3:30 pm. Not exactly my usual pasta with tomato sauce but that’s OK. I had a better night’s sleep on Saturday night and was up at 6:40 am to have my standard oatmeal and banana pre race breakfast.

Dad picked me up at 7:30 am to head over to Mercer Island. We joked that it was like back when I was in high school and he and I would be up early on the weekends driving to who knows where to get to a basketball tournament! When we got to Mercer Island the traffic at the 77th Ave SE exit was backed up onto the highway! It took about 10-15 minutes but eventually we made our way into one of the race parking lots. I got myself organized at the car and then Dad and I walked about 10 minutes to the community center. I picked up my bib and chip, waited in a longish porta potty line and then Dad and I made our way over to the start. I lined up between the 8:00 and 9:00 min/mile pace signs and did some quick stretches before the gun went off.

The plan

I didn’t have much of a plan coming into this race. This was my eight official half marathon so I wasn’t too nervous about finishing. I just wanted to push myself and see what I could do without putting a lot of pressure on myself to get a PB or anything. Honestly, going into the race I was feeling good about my training but I wasn’t feeling like I was in PB form. I’ve been having problems with tight hamstrings and I wasn’t sure how that was going to affect me.

The Race

I really didn’t want to go out too hard and luckily the course was so congested in the first mile that this wasn’t a problem. I missed the first mile marker but averaged 8:42 over the first two miles. I was feeling OK early on in the race but at the same time I knew that dropping down to 8:23 (the pace for a 1:50:00 finish, my dream goal) just was not going to happen. Instead I decided to just run hard and see what would happen. There were a lot of winding turns along the east side of the island during the first 6 miles. I tried to run the tangents and avoid road sections with a steep camber but they really started to get annoying.  I took my first walk break at 35 minutes during the fifth mile. We were running on one lane of E Mercer Way and the course was surprisingly congested. The density of runners didn’t impede me in any way but there were a lot of people around.

I was feeling OK, but not super, as we hit the bottom of the island and started heading back north. I knew the second half of the course was hillier than the first but since I hadn’t memorized the elevation chart I didn’t exactly know when the hills would come. We covered a number of small rolling hills which I felt that I handled reasonably well. At this point I’d decided that 8:40 min/mile would be a good target pace for me but I couldn’t quite get down there. Miles 7 and 8 were both done in 8:46. I was feeling my hamstrings/butt musles fatigue already. I wouldn’t say they really hurt but, as per usual, my legs were more tired than my lungs. I took my only gel of the race during a walk break at the 1:10 mark. This made my mile 9 come in at 9:02 which didn’t make me too happy. The highest point on the course came during the tenth mile which was also slow at 9:00. Hitting mile 10 means that the finish line is “just a 5K away” and I rode the downhills hard in this mile to come in at 8:27.

The biggest hill came during the twelfth mile and it was a beast. I’m sure it seemed worse because I was tired but it brought most of the runners near me to a walk. I only let myself walk for about 50 steps at one point and otherwise pushed myself up it. Then I tried to push through the last 1.1 miles but I was beat. There was a short incline just before the finish line that I didn’t very much appreciate. Fortunately there were lots of people lining the course and the cheering really helped in the last few hundred meters.

Post Race

I crossed the finish line in a chip time of 1:56:02. I immediately met up with Dad, Alli, Tim and Matt. My legs were shot but the rest of me felt OK within a few minutes. I ate a banana and half a bagel and then we started walking back to the car. I was quickly getting cold and all my warm clothes were in the trunk. Dad, Matt and I went out for a post race brunch at the Rusty Pelican in Wallingford. Usually I’m a sweet food brunch kind of girl but for some reason today I was craving savory so I had a veggie and eggs scrambler with potatoes and toast. Oh and of course coffee. We spent the rest of the day watching NCAA basketball on TV!

Final Thoughts

I really upped the speedwork and tempo runs during this training cycle so part of me is disapointed that I didn’t see that pay off with a faster finish time. I’m starting to think that doing both speedwork and a tempo run each week might just be too much for my legs. In the end though I’m pleased with my race result because I feel as though I gave pretty much everything I could on race morning and that’s all I can ask of myself.

Data

------------------------------------------------
                 Cumulative  Cumulative  Average
Mile     Split      Time        Pace       HR
------------------------------------------------
  1     08:42.3   0:08:42.3   08:42.3    179
  2     08:42.3   0:17:24.6   08:42.3    180
  3     08:22.3   0:25:46.9   08:35.6    185
  4     08:36.4   0:34:23.3   08:35.8    185
  5     08:50.7   0:43:14.0   08:38.8    183
  6     08:51.7   0:52:05.7   08:41.0    184
  7     08:46.0   1:00:51.8   08:41.7    183
  8     08:45.9   1:09:37.7   08:42.2    180
  9     09:01.6   1:18:39.3   08:44.4    180
 10     09:00.2   1:27:39.5   08:45.9    180
 11     08:27.2   1:36:06.6   08:44.2    176
 12     09:03.0   1:45:09.7   08:45.8    175
 13.1   10:52.3   1:56:02.0   08:51.4    178
------------------------------------------------
Total 1:56:02.0                          180
------------------------------------------------
Overall place: 820/1620 (49th percentile)
Gender place: 276/798 (65th percentile)
Division place: 61/144 (57th percentile)
[places are based on chip time and do not include walkers]

I had a decent run on a tough course. The complete results are here. I’ll post my full race report in a few days.

Another training cycle, another pretty graph. I’m really happy with my training for the half marathon. This wasn’t an easy training program. The mileage was totally reasonable for me but having both a speedwork session and a tempo session each week was tough. My hamstrings seemed to take the brunt of it. I’m quite pleased to have survived the 10 weeks of training mostly in tact. I’ve been very diligent this week in taking care of my hamstrings (stretching, ice and vitamin I) and getting those few last runs in.

So moving on to tomorrow’s race, here are my goals:

• Goal #1: The dream goal – <1:50:00
• Goal #2: Set a new PB – <1:51:59
• Goal #3: Beat 2 hours – <2:00:00

I probably should have some kind of a plan heading into the race. I’m not going to wear a pace band but I know the paces associated with each of the above goals so I’ll just monitor that. I would like to try and not go out too hard like I did in the Seattle Marathon. That means I don’t want to do any of miles 1-5 any faster than 8:23 min/mile. A non finish time related goal would be to negative split the race. I know there are some big hills but I’m just going to stay positive and deal with them as they come.

I’m not quite sure when I became a person who says “it’s just a half marathon” but I’m not feeling the usual level of anticipation I feel one week out from race day. It’s not that I’m not looking forward to the race, I’m just not putting a lot of pressure on myself. I figure I’ll run the thing and whatever happens happens. The one thing I do have going for me is that a laissez faire attitude is what lead to my current half marathon PB from 2007. I have a lot of faith in my training program too so I have no doubt that I’m well prepared.

I haven’t even checked a weather report yet! I figure it can’t be much worse than my run this morning. It was 2C, windy and snowing huge wet snow clusters. I can’t call then snowflakes because they were big enough to hurt when they hit your face! They were flying around like little mini commets. I was soaked by then end of a 45 minute run because everything melted once it hit my body. Talk about a mess!

I’m looking forward to taper week if only because it means an extra 15-30 minutes of sleep in the mornings!

This Thursday I feel I redeemed myself from the previous week. On Thursday of Week 7 the weather was bad and I wimped out and converted a 8mi tempo run into a 6mi easy run. This Thursday I awoke to bad weather again. This time it was (1) dark, (2) cold and (3) raining very hard. I have a rule. I will run in any two of those things but I will not run in all three! So I postponed my morning run to the after work when I knew that it at least be light out. Surprisingly everything worked out and I got the hard tempo run in. Success!

On Saturday I did a race simulation long run and it pretty much kicked my butt. I tried very hard during the first six miles to keep my pace very easy. Given my heart rate I think I achieve that. Then I was aiming to run around 9:00 min/mile for the last six miles. I probably would have been much closer to that if it hadn’t been for the mile 11 which came in at 9:46. I have two of reasons/excuses for this (1) I had to stop my watch and restart at a traffic light which killed my flow and (2) there were a couple moderate hills on the route which slowed me down. Of course that’s kind of irrelevant but at least I got it done.

So that’s another week of training in the bank. Not overly exciting, I know, but I’m putting in the effort and I’m hopeful that I’ll have a good result in my upcoming half!

On the plus side I had a really great weekend in Victoria. My Sunday long run was scheduled at 16 miles and I was a little nervous starting out. I knew I could do it but 16 miles is not a distance I take lightly. It’s the longest run of my training program so it sort of seemed like the peak of the program. Matt ran the first 8.2 miles with me on a hilly course. Then I did the last 7.8 on my own on much flatter terrain. I held up really well until about mile 14.5 and then I trudged it out to the end. I’m pretty happy with my endurance right now.

The half marathon is just less than three weeks away. I’m still dealing which some hamstring issues. It’s mostly just tightness/soreness after hard efforts but I’m going to try and spend a little extra time stretching them out over the next little while. I’m not sure if breaking 1:50 is in store for me but I definitely feel good about the effort I’m putting into my training.

The other key work out of the week was the race simulation long run. My final five hard miles came out to a good average pace but the mile splits were all over the place (9:10, 8:50, 8:35, 9:19, 8:50) which isn’t great. I really struggled during the hilly fourth mile but that’s probably good practice for my half marathon in four weeks.

Friday was a scheduled rest day and by then I’d smartened up. I was all about recovery and taking it easy. I did walk home from school (something I’ve been doing a lot more often recently) to try and stretch things out a bit. I did an easy run on Saturday afternoon and was relieved to see that my legs felt a bit better. I decided to try and keep my HR really low and felt like I was moving at a shuffle but it turns out the pace was pretty normal for me for this type of run. My legs felt pretty good for Sunday’s 14 miler. I was pretty much fine until mile 12 and then I just wanted to be done.

So all in all it was a pretty good week even though I probably pushed my legs harder than I should have. I should have been more flexible about moving my schedule around or even canceling a hard session if it’s just too much. I’d rather be undertrained and healthy than perfectly trained by injured!

This morning I ran the Love ‘em or Leave ‘em 5K at Green Lake. I previously ran this race in 2006 (27:35) and 2008 (24:30). The big change this year was that instead of only using the pedestrian path they actually shut down one lane of Green Lake Drive and used it for most of the route. This made the course marginally faster (no extra loop behind the community center to add mileage). My goal for the race was to run <25:00.

Pre Race

I picked up my bib and timing chip on Saturday so I didn’t have to worry about that on race morning. It was 1C and cloudy as I was getting ready so I chose to wear capris, a thermal long-sleeved shirt, running vest and gloves. The race was slated to start and 9:30 am so I planned to leave my apartment at 9:10 and run a one mile warm-up to the start line. At about 8:40 I tried to turn on my Garmin to take off the auto-lap function but it displayed a low battery warning. I’d charged it on Saturday so this was unexpected. I charged it for half and hour but as I went to leave the apartment it wouldn’t even turn on. Augh! Garmin Failure! I tried to remember how to reset it but I didn’t really have time so I just left it at home and made my way to the race. My warm-up was probably a little too quick but I made it to the start line about 8 mintues before the start. I lined up half way between the 7:00 and 8:00 min/mile pace signs and tried to relax and get some quick stretches in.

The Race

I was feeling a bit flustered at the start and since I didn’t have my Garmin I knew I was just going to have to run by feel. The gun went off and it only took a few seconds for me to cross the starting line. I took off hard, probably too hard, but there were supposed to be 2000+ runners in the race and I really didn’t want to get stuck behind a crowd. The course did run on the pedestrian path on the west side of the lake during the first mile but thankfully I had no crowding issues. By the time we got to Green Lake Drive I was hurting and we weren’t even at the first mile maker yet! Once I was into the second mile my goal was to just run at a controlled hard pace. Once I was into the third mile I started using mind games to maintain pace. My current favourite is counting steps in a ladder by 10′s up to 100. I was definitely being passed way more than I was passing people which made me think that I must have been slowing down substantially. I really didn’t know what pace I was running but I knew I wanted it to be over. We turned off Green Lake and onto the path towards the finish behind the Aqua Theatre. I ran hard through the finish. I didn’t get a good look at the clock but I could have sworn it said 23 something as I was running up towards it.

What? Did I just run sub 24? That’s ridiculous. No wonder I feel like I’m about to collapse!

Post Race

After the race was over I caught my breath, drank a bottle of water and ate an apple and a mini cupcake. I was hoping that they would post the race results and after about 10 minutes they finally came out. I found my name and it said I’d run 23:08! That’s a new personal best by 11 seconds. I walked away in shock. A few minutes later I had to go back and be sure that I’d read the results correctly!

I don’t have splits so I have no idea how evenly I ran the race. I actually think not having my Garmin helped me set a PB today. If I’d seen my pace I might have been tempted to let myself slow down since I was running way ahead of my goal. As it was I felt like I was running slowly (especially since I was being passed so much) so I tried really hard to maintain whatever pace I could. Setting a 5K PB wasn’t on my radar for this race or even this year so it’s a nice bonus. Hopefully it’s an indication that there are more PB’s (half marathon? 10K?) in my future!

Results

Time: 23:08

Pace: 7:28 min/mile

Overall place: 232 out of 2010 (88th percentile) [Places include walkers]

Division place: 18 out of 407 (95th percentile)

Gender place: 66 out of 1310 (94th percentile)

Full results are available here.

This was the first week that I got to do what I like to call the “Craziest. Speed. Workout. Ever” The official description is “2 miles at half-marathon pace, 2×1 mile at 10-K pace, 2×800 meters at 5-K pace, with 3 minutes recovery after the 2-mile and 2 minutes recovery after the miles and 800.” This is the workout that forced me to learn to program workouts into my Garmin because that it too much to try and co-ordinate on the fly. My goal paces were 8:24 for half marathon pace, 7:57 for 10K pace and 7:40 for 5K pace. I was a bit quick on the 2 mile segment (I actually had to force myself to slow down during the second mile to bring my average pace up) and worried that I’d pay for it later but I managed to hit the other intervals nearly perfectly so I’m calling the workout a resounding success. And the best part is I get to do it all over again in two weeks.

Oh and if you’re wondering how I managed to spend my lazy Saturday morning, so far I’ve called my Mom, gone grocery shopping, bought the Sunday paper (yes, on a Saturday), picked up my race bib for tomorrow, had a scone and coffee treat and solved the six daily KenKen puzzles on the New York Times website.