Race day is finally here. It's been a month since my last race, a 10 miler. Today's 30K will be interesting. My last run of 30K or more was about two weeks ago, and I've had a relatively light two weeks of running. All's good though, and I have to trust in the training of this past summer.
My goal is not necessarily time, but try to get my body accustomed to marathon pace in a race setting. My BQ pace is 4:38 kilometres or 7:29 miles which is a little less aggressive than last year's pace of 4:30 kilometres or 7:15 miles. Last year, I nailed the 4:30 pace and finished with a sub 2:15.
Today, I'm going to see how things go, but the feeling great version is to aim for a progressively faster run that would have me do a sub 2:20. The perfect pace run would land me around 2:20 to 2:22. If I were to do about 13 miles at pace, I'd probably land around the 2:25 mark. We'll see, weather will factor into this I'm sure
I'm toying with bringing my fuel belt since there will be water stops every 3K.
Finally, with my race pack, I finally landed one of those MORE-tal pin with a 75K, which is the total distance I'll have done at this race after tonight. I ran the 15K two years ago and the 30K last year.
Nice medal! That temps me to do this race again....
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. Looking back, you're right about the pace being ~5 seconds too fast through most of the first half. That could probably do me in more than I thought.
I wore my fuel belt as well and finished both 10 oz bottles then had it filled up and finished them again PLUS taking water/gatorade at most water stops.
I've realized this morning that I was dehydrated. I drank 50-60 oz during the race and that much again after the race and didn't have to use the washroom until this morning - 12+ hours later.
I didn't know how to prepare for the evening race. I was afraid of drinking too much and needed a pit stop so I probablt started dehydrated. Knowing what to eat was also difficult since I can't run within about 4 hours of a meal. I did have my usual pre-race pasta meal Friday night and a smaller serving for lunch yesterday.
I have some experimenting to do over a couple more long runs to figure out what to do for Scotia.
Still feeling pretty bummed since I had hoped this race would be a confidence-booster and instead it turned out to be the opposite. Hopefully it was more of an off-day and a result of the factors you mentioned and not a reflection of my training/fitness.
Thanks again for the feedback. I appreciate it.
Sorry for the long-winded comment!!
Looking forward to your report... you totally killed your goal!