Drake Half Marathon report

Drake Half Marathon Race Report

April 30, 2011

Des Moines, IA.  56 ˚F and cloudy at start time.  Moderate wind.  Moderately rolling loop course with 433 ft total climb (source: USATF map)

Course: http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=122478

Gun time 1:29:00.  Previous PR for the distance: 1:38:12 in 1990, and 1:37:57 for the run leg of a half ironman in 2010.

Background

The Drake Half Marathon was a B+ race for me this year.  I spent all winter on a “get fast” program for both bike and run.  My best 5K time trial was 19:15.  I did another one at the very end of the training cycle, at which I thought I had a chance to go to ~19:00 or just under, but I couldn’t hold it mentally and fell apart.  I did not adjust my VDOT paces, took 2 weeks of transition time, and am in my 4^th week of training for a HIM distance triathlon.  As prep for this race, I moved a weekend bike ride to the beginning of the week, dropped the mileage on my mid-week long run to just an hour, and did only biking on Thursday, and only swimming on Friday.  The race was Saturday morning.  I felt reasonably rested.

Those that know me are aware that I am the calculating sort.  I looked at several calculators to see if my 5K augured well for a sub-90 min race.  The straight VDOT equivalent time was 1:28:15, but other estimators ranged up to 1:31:30.  After careful consideration, I set sub-90:00 as my goal.  The required pace for 90 minutes is 6:52. 

Based on a 90 minute goal and the course map, my plan was

• Miles 1-3 at 7:05
• Mile 4 at 6:35 (downhill)
• Miles 5-6 7:00 in the long uphill part
• Remainder 6:48, not being sure of the significance of one other hill

Day before

I’m an old-school carb guy.  Nothing very special here diet wise, save that I consumed quite a bit of carb until early afternoon.  Meal size at dinner was reduced to keep the colon fairly clear on race day.

At about 9:30 pm the night before, my 16 year old son Christopher figured out that I was running and gave me a hard time about having not told him.  Since he is in the middle of both high school track AND soccer seasons, and had had three soccer matches and a track meet that week, it hadn’t occurred to me that he would want to run.  By 10:00 pm, he had secured permission from his track coach.  This threw something of a monkey wrench into my mental preparation, because I realized now that I would have to deal with him as well (sign up, transport, etc.).  But I resolved just to roll with the punches and have a great bonding morning.

Race morning

Chris and I got up at 5:00 and got to the race site by 7:00.  Sign up for him and packet pickup were uneventful.  I had a very light breakfast of toast and brought a 300 calorie bottle of InfiniT with me.  I consumed about 2/3 of the InfiniT by about 7:30 before final lockup of the car and strip down.

The other issue I had to deal with was that I had to give up my Garmin.  My old Garmin finally died a few weeks ago, and I had been using my son’s for the last few weeks.  Given that he had to totally SWAG a pace because he hasn’t trained for the distance (and it was his…) I agreed to give him the running watch.  I pulled the computer off my bike and calculated what my paces were in miles per hour, though I knew the speed would not be as precise as pace would have been. To carry this would be a pain, but better than nothing.

We lined up near the front of the crowd at the start.  Both of us expected that Christopher would beat me, but there was more uncertainty in his time than mine.  He had a race plan, but it had more RPE variability than mine.  We agreed just to meet at the end of the race.

After the gun went off, I quickly found that the bike computer was not very useful for determining current pace.  It just isn’t designed to go as slow as a runner and the fluctuation is too high to be very useful.  I had set it up to auto-lap every mile and give me average speed for the mile in addition to current speed.  This meant I would at least get useful data for the latter half of each mile.

The first mile was an execution disaster – partly as a result of using the bike computer instead of a running watch.  I went out in about 6:40.  This said, it was a struggle to slow down.  The first few miles felt ridiculously easy.  There was a pack of people running in view of me that I was tempted to catch and run with.  I decided not to; I decided I needed to run MY race, not do whatever that group was going to do.  The middle section of the race, until about mile 9 or 10 just felt like a garden variety run at some effort, and the last 3-4 miles were fairly hard work, but grossly uncomfortable.  I took a gel at the top of hills at about miles 6.5 and 10.5.

Mile splits were

1. 6:40
2. 6:52
3. 6:53
4. 6:26 downhill
5. 6:42 up and down
6. 7:04 uphill
7. 6:51
8. 6:47
9. 6:49
10. 6:50
11. 7:03 included uphill
12. 6:48
13. 6:40

I adjusted these up a few seconds per mile from the raw Garmin data, since my auto laps were slightly shorter than the mile markers indicated.  Examining the splits, I ran the last ten miles or so almost exactly as planned, and picked up half of the minute faster than I intended in the first three miles.  The rest was just a couple seconds here and there.

My final placement was 58^th overall out of 1061.  In the last mile, I passed 8 people and was passed by one guy whom I estimated to be in his early 20s.

I learned as I finished that Chris was half a minute ahead of me, since I heard his name being announced as he crossed the line ahead of me.  I had not been aware I was anywhere close to him.

Final gun time was 1:29:00.  Actual time was only several seconds less.

Post race analysis

I was very pleased with this time.  I had run 3 half marathons in the late 80s, none nearly as fast as this.  My marathon PR (from 2010) is 3:16:40; this time is faster than the half-marathon equivalent – so this is undoubtedly progress.

I feel like if I had known how to do this race optimally, I could have shaved another minute or so off the time.  My heart rate was under 160 for miles 1-4, between 160 and 165 for miles 5-11, and between 165 and 170 for the last couple of miles.  My threshold HR is in 168-170.  There was no long period of intense suffering.

That said, this is a very good compromise.  I learned that I could pace with much less than optimal feedback.  I set a big PR.  Even better, my recovery is pretty quick.  As I write this (Sunday), I am sore, but not overly so.  I am pretty sure I will be able to be running back to normal by Tuesday.  Had I really blown everything out, recovery would have been longer.  Thus, this race fits well into my training regimen for my first A-race of the year, in mid June.

My only lingering question is my mettle as a RACER as opposed to making my own personal achievement.  I am confident – after the fact – that I could have raced with that pack.  Over the rest of the year, maybe I should focus on being a Racer instead of a Runner after I get to The Line in my races. Feedback on this point is appreciated.

On the side, I will also say that I’m proud of my son’s effort.  Dude hasn’t run any longer than 6 miles since last fall, but has run fast this spring.  With zero taper, the fourth competitive event in a week, and a seat-of-the-pants race plan, he crushed the race for the first time at the distance.  Undoubtedly, if I had figured out he was only 30 sec ahead of me and somehow caught up…he would have outsprinted me the last half mile, and both of us would be in bigger recovery holes; he has another track meet and soccer match this week, and I have a triathlon to get ready for soon.  So it’s perfect.  He beat me, and I was close, so both of us can soothe our egos…and both of us have times to be proud of.