Around the Bay Road Race 2009

Time 2:20:38.7
Overall place 384 / 4926
Gender place 334 / 2623
Category place 57 / 521 (Men 45-49)

Splits
10k 47:21
15k 1:11:13
20k 1:34:27

Time to retie shoe laces at 4k ==> 1:35 min

Pre-race Comments:
- Arrived on Friday, picked up race kit that afternoon.
- Easy run Saturday AM. Felt pretty good.
- Did additional stretching Saturday evening as left hamstring had been tight during the week.
- Nutrition was good coming into race day.
- Sleepy was okay Friday but short. Saturday night was good.

Race morning:
- Raining and just above freezing
- Was able to get good start position. Almost 7000 lined up.
- Oatmeal for breakfast 2 and ½ hours before race.
- One bottle of sports drink (with carbs) (SPR-3) 1 hour before race.

Race:
- Shoelace, although double knotted, unfortunately came undone in km 4. First time ever. In the process of pulling the laces loose I accidentally pulled the knots tighter. Raining and cold, hence took approx. 1:35 – 1:40 to get re-tied.
- Tried not to take off too quickly after starting again. It happened, there was no need to panic.
- Basically 4:30 for most of the race on the flats.
- I wanted to ensure that I was getting enough liquids in during the race hence stopped regularly to drink. Stops were pretty quick and only resulted in a few seconds lost per stop.
- 2 gel breaks (1 gel each time). These took longer but the race was long enough that I wanted to ensure I had enough carbs to push through to the end.
- Hills started around km 18. Mostly rolling hills for the first while with one long slow hill. Then a stretch of about a k that was basically flat, followed by the one long S-curve kind of a hill.
- Last 3 k was a gradual downhill to the finish.
- Wind was more of a factor through the middle section along the lake. More exposed through those sections.
- Rained most of the race but not heavy rains fortunately. The net effect was that it kept things pretty cool as the temp was only in the 30s.
- Felt strong through the hills and through the final sections. Passed a lot of people on the hills which tells me my hill strength is probably not that bad right now.

Post-run Analysis:
- Although more of a risk I think I could have taken a few seconds faster per kilometre. I felt strong right through the end. 2:15 was possible on the day but I would have needed to be more aggressive to achieve the result (excluding the time lost for the shoelace incident).
- Hydration overall was excellent. The cooler day helped.
- The two gel breaks mostly likely was about right. Need to think about training and taking the gels while I run as I lost time walking getting them open and then consumed.
- Left knee was tight at times. Need to focus on muscles around the knee this week.

Recovery:
- Felt quite good after the race. More fatigued the next day but I was able to an easy recovery run Monday morning. Overall, I’ll need a few days of good rest.
- No sharp pains in any one area. Will continued to work the left side due the tightness I felt around the knee. Trying to get an extra massage in this week.

Prognosis for upcoming training and ½ marathon in Montreal on April 19th:
- I definitely feel that I’m training around the right paces. Recovery has been good.
- For the ½ in Montreal I’ll plan to be more aggressive and see what is possible.

TrainingPeaks tool Review

Review of my initial trial of Training Peaks web based tool for capturing my running stats.

Athlete Profile
Primary Sport: running
Supplemental Sports: Yoga, cycling
Current tool: SportTracks
Watch: Garmin 405 with HRM

Costs: not free, too upload my content from the Garmin watch I need the paid version

Not Reviewed: Nutrition components

Why did I review this:
- Read that Simon Whitefield uses this tool.
- Sportracks is not perfect either.

General Pluses:
- Able to easily enter future workouts

General Negatives
- Reporting is poor. For example,
○ difficult to generate custom reports or
○ Can't view the year at glance sorted by weeks.
○ Can't look at year to date numbers
- Can't add other sports or activities such as Yoga or Strength and Conditioning workout.

GUI -- General
- Took some time to get used to the interface. Not everything was intuitive.
- GUI doesn't respond to page down inputs. In the Dashboard and Journal this is a pain especially for someone who prefers to use the keyboard.

GUI -- Calendar view
- Should open to view at least one previous weeks data. Force to scroll back to view last weeks data.
- Weekly summary column useful.
- It would be nice to have the week number for the calendar year.

GUI -- Spreadsheet view
- Not clear to me what I would use this for. No summary data hence would it not just be easier to read of the calendar view data. Lacks organization at the row level (i.e. Totals).

GUI -- Dashboard view
- Fitness summary not that relevant for single sport athletes.

GUI -- Journal view
- Hard to navigate up and down without using a mouse. This tends to slow me down.
- Would prefer to have all of these windows in a single tabbed view.
- Graph Pod useful to see most of the primary data at a glance.
- Map pod okay but would prefer Google Earth map. That's just a personal preference.
- Free form aspect of the comments and notes seams useful.
- It would be nice to be able to edit the distance on laps. In the winter we run indoors and hence don't have the distance recorded. Also there are times when you don't wear the watch. The overall distance can be edited but not the individual laps.
- Equipment needs to have categories for shoes. For example, daily, race shoes, retired shoes, etc.


More to follow as time permits

--brian

1st time doing Yasso 800s

Really excited about the results from the track last night. This was a real breakthrough run for me. Needless to say I'm quite please about the implications.

Details:
W/U + Drills: 24:26

Yasso 800s:
Splits
3:03, 2:59, 3:00, 3:05, 3:01, 3:03, 3:03, 3:02, 3:01, 2:57

Rest breaks:
3;11, 3;11, 3:11, 3:06, 3:07, 3:04, 3:07, 3:08, 3:05, approx. 2:00

Peak HRs:
173,174,174,174,177
173,173,179,177,176

Avg HRs:
162, 164, 165, 163, 165, 165, 166, 165, 167, 166

Avg HR during recovery:
136, 139, 139, 140, 140, 141, 142, 144,

St. Patrick's Day 10k

Overall Place 34th out of 432
Time 42:20.9
Category Men 40-49
Category Place 9/56
Gender Place 29/191

Splits
1st half (4:05, 4:09, 4:12, 4:15, 4:25)
2nd half (4:05, 4:08, 4:10, 4:05, 4:09)

Notes

Pre-race

• Good sleep
• Oatmeal for breakfast at 7:00 AM (2 hours before race start)
• 1 bottle of SPR-3 75 minutes before the start.
• Weather -10 c (14 degrees Fahrenheit) with a brisk wind in our faces on the way out.
• Clothing
• Tights
• 2 long sleeve shirts and a vest. This was about right. Not too hot, not too cold.

Warm-up

• Easy 20 minutes running
• Stretching
• Pre-start pick ups to get the heart race going
• How did I feel at the start
  Not bad but not as fresh as Wednesday evening.
  Felt strong and mentally ready to work it.

Target time

• Low 41 minute mark.
  

Race

• Pushed hard through first k. First k split slower than normal. Planned to be under 4 minutes for the first k as per my normal 10k races.
• Not as much spring in my step in the early stages.
• Focused on keeping pace steady and finding the right zone to be in after the first k.
• Brisk wind in our face on the way out.
• At the half dug in and pushed. Caught next guy ahead in the 6th k, caught the 2nd guy at the end of the race, no others close.
• Managed to keep one of my running friends behind me who had only been about 25 feet behind at the half. It was good to know he was there pushing me.
• Worked to keep pushing through final kms (miles). Strong through to the finish line.
• Stomach not too happy at the finish.
  

General comments

• As mentioned above felt much fresher on Wednesday than I did on race morning. Even with the day off. Thursday run felt really good as well.
• Not sure if the temperature and wind were the difference. One of the faster woman that I know was telling me she was off by a couple of minutes on the day.
• Felt stronger as the race went on. 2nd half was strong but fast.
• Mentally I felt my 2nd half was really stronger. First half could still be improved.
• Overall pleased with the effort. It often takes me a couple of races to really start nailing these early spring/late winter races.
• Generally speaking I feel I am on track for where I need to be for the 30k race in March 29th. Targeting 2:15 for the 30k race.