Saturday, August 22, 2009

Sharpening up

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.

1 comment:

Marlene said...

Nice medal! That temps me to do this race again....


Thanks 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!