Rollicking

What I Have

Britt + Joy + Weekend at Home + Train Ride + Bonfires + Coldplay Concert + Detroit + Road Trip with New Friends + Autumn + Winter + Life + One Point and Shoot Sony Camera

The only thing I need now is my camera's battery charger.

Race Recap: Men's Health Urbanathlon, Chicago

I finished the second, and potentially final, fall race of my schedule this past Saturday. It was the Men's Health Urbanathlon, a roughly 10.5 mile race through the heart of Chicago. The twist with this race is that I entered as the first leg of a three person relay team (my two teammates were some friends from Pritzker) and that the course contains a series of obstacles.

It was a good race - I don't have any official times, but my 3.4 mile leg of the race was finished in, at most, 22:00 flat (and most likely less, as I stopped my watch...only to find my hand must have slipped a few minutes later when the watch was still running). That translates to a 6:29/mile pace and a roughly 20:09 5K. That's about where I wanted to be three weeks out of my half marathon training, and I'm ready to put down some good miles over the winter time.

The race itself was slightly bizarre for someone used to more traditional road races - there were no mile markers to speak of, so I wasn't able to pick up any mile splits. Similarly, I had no idea where the end of my leg was, and never really started a kick of any sort. Instead, I turned a corner to find my teammate and a multitude of our fellow racers waiting for the handoffs. So who knows how things could have turned out, especially if this was a traditional 5K that lacked the construction hurdles and tubes (my obstacles).

Overall result: our team finished 16th out of 186 or so male teams, running the 10.5 mile race in 1:22:42. I had the intermediate leg of sorts, as our second runner had a roughly 5.4 mile run and our third runner had a roughly 2.7 mile run (including a run up the side of Soldier Field and climbing an 8 foot wall before the finish line). My leg was the easy way out compared to those guys!

Break It Down

The Gospel (Lk 10:25-37) for today is one of my favorites:

"There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said,
"Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Jesus said to him, "What is written in the law?
How do you read it?"
He said in reply,
"You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your being,
with all your strength,
and with all your mind,
and your neighbor as yourself."
He replied to him, "You have answered correctly;
do this and you will live."

Race Recap: Banco Half Marathon, Chicago, 9/14/2008

Well, the Banco Half came and went. The conditions were less than ideal - a strong wind, rain, and cold temperatures made my half marathon debut an interesting race. Mile splits are below:

Mile 1: 9:06
Mile 2: 17:18 (8:11)
Mile 3: 25:44 (8:26)
Mile 4: 34:20 (8:36)
Mile 5: 42:46 (8:25)
Mile 6: 51:16 (8:29)
Mile 7: 1:00:24 (9:08)
Mile 8: 1:08:16 (7:51) <- ?!?!
Mile 9: 1:17:10 (8:54)
Mile 10: 1:26:27 (9:17)
Mile 11: 1:37:01 (10:34) <- bathroom break
Mile 12: 1:46:24 (9:22)
Mile 13.1: 1:56:26 (10:02 for 1.1 mile)

My plan for pacing was anywhere between 8:20 a mile and 9:10 a mile for the first 10 miles, and then I would see what I had left in the tank for the last 5K. I wanted to start slowly for the first 4 or 5, as well.

You can see that I took it easy for the first mile, mainly out of necessity due to the massive number of runners. Miles 2-6 were just about where I wanted them to be, but then Mile 7 was a little bizarre, for whatever reason. I recall cramping up a bit in my quads around the seventh mile marker, so I tried to pick it up over the 8th mile to compensate. Obviously, I overshot by running a 7:51 mile, much faster than I would have preferred at that point.

I really started to feel it after the 7:51 mile, as evidenced by miles 9 and 10, and also started to feel the pasta, cookies, and oranges I ate the night before the race (I wasn't able to fully digest the food by the onset of the race). I limped through the last three miles.

My new insoles never arrived - they'll probably get here tomorrow. The knees definitely hurt this afternoon, but not as badly as I feared they would, and I should be running again tomorrow or Tuesday morning. I did notice, though, that my legs felt more banged up in the later miles than they did during my two 13.1 mile training runs. So I suspect that the new insoles would have helped improve the last 5K of today's race. Some new Asics would have been even better.

Overall, I was satisfied with the race. I thought I had a serious shot to go sub-1:50 today, but the beat up shoes, old insoles, difficult conditions, and strain of carrying my meal from last night were a bit much to overcome. It's OK, though - this was my first race in more than 4 years, and, as my races always are, it was a terrific learning experience and the sheer magnitude of the event was something completely novel. Of the factors that hampered my performance, all but one (the extreme weather) were preventable, and should be nonfactors in my next race.

So, in the end, I've learned the following:

1) I need to eat less food earlier in the evening the night before a half marathon. I also need to attempt to use the same eating patterns for my long training runs that I do for the eventual race so that I can tweak my eating habits as needed.
2) I need to arrive at the race earlier than I did today, and I shouldn't walk to the race. I walked from my place to the starting line, a good 12-15 block walk, after meeting with two of my classmates who also ran the race. On a day like today, with the flooding and winds, spending time walking around with water-logged shoes before a race even begins is tremendously energy-consuming.
3) I need to improve my pure foot speed. I basically jumped from my winter training plan, which was used simply to get back into shape, to the half plan without doing any basic 5K workouts. I don't have any idea what my 5K time is right now, but I'm guessing it's at least 22:00 or 23:00. If I could shave some minutes off that before my next training cycle, especially by utilizing a training plan that maintained at least 60 min long runs on Sundays, than my next distance race should be a significant improvement over the Banco Half.
4) I need to make sure my shoes/insoles are sufficient.
5) I need to make sure my gear is ready to go. My Suunto heart rate monitor died about 1/4 in the race, and I suspect it was the battery of the watch (I changed the heart rate strap battery two weeks ago). If the last 5K of this race was problematic due to endurance issues, they likely could have been remedied by simply having a functional heart rate monitor.

Overall, my self-grade for the race was a B+ (or an A-, even, given the conditions). There are two shorter races coming up this fall that will finish up my fall training cycle: the Chicago Men's Health Urbanathlon, which I'm running as a tri with two of my class mates, and (potentially) an 8K, the Hyde Park Gargoyle Gallop. Then it's on to winter, and then hopefully a 5K or two, a spring half, and (maybe) a full marathon.

Mileage Charts

For whatever it's worth, I've included some graphs of my mileage over the past number of months and weeks:

I'm A Little Nervous

About the pain that presented itself in my outer knee when I finished my 4.2 mile tempo run this morning. It lingered throughout the morning and early afternoon, then went away in the evening. The same thing happened yesterday.

The shoes (seen in my last post) will have, as of tomorrow, 301 miles on them and they're lighter weight Asics. Most of my training has been on asphalt and concrete, so it would make sense that this pair is getting worn out around this time. It's disappointing, though, that the shoes have started their last leg during my taper for the half.

Anyways, there's no way I'll be able to pick up a new pair of Asics before the race. I have a 2 mile tune up run tomorrow, then I'm off until Sunday morning. I also have some new insoles arriving on Friday or Saturday. So I'm hoping that the taper, along with the new insoles, will get me through this race unscathed.