2008 PRs: Year in review

I thought this topic deserved its own post!

I just finished my last race of the year.

I end up 2008 with PRs at the mile (8:44), 5k (28:00), and 15k (1:40:22) distances.

My new events for 2008 (not counted for PRs until I beat my initial performance): 5k, 10k, and 40k cycling individual time trials; 40 km cycling road race; and Muddy Buddy; as well as finishing the Annapolis Striders Championship Series of running races (7th/9 qualifiers out of 23 AG participants).

In triathlon, I didn't hit any overall PRs, but I had my fastest Olympic-distance swim leg (1500m in 33:18), fastest half-Ironman bike leg (56 miles in 3:23:22), and fastest Olympic-distance run leg (10k in 1:09:34).

(I'm not counting Steelhead duathlon which should have been a half Ironman).

Still haven't cracked that sub-hour 10k time that I've been wanting to, but I only ran one standalone 10k this year, shortly after coming back from pneumonia. Oh well. I'm not sure I'll run any standalone 10ks in 2009, so that goal will just have to wait a while.

Hooray for running faster and for trying new things!

Valentine's Day 5K

Heading off soon for my first race of the season in our 8-race local Championship Series. Time to declare my intentions:

• Dream goal: Under 28:26 (9:10 min/mile pace)


• Goal #2: 5k PR under 30:00 (9:40 min/mile pace)


• Goal #3: 5k PR (under 30:26, 9:49 min/mile pace)

I usually add a default "finish upright and smiling" goal, but in this case if I'm smiling before I reach the finish line I probably didn't run it hard enough. I'll save the smiles for after the finish line.

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WOOO HOOO! I wasn't smiling immediately after the finish line (I was huffing and puffing and trying to breathe), but I certainly am now!!

Watch time: 28:02
Pace: 9:02 min/mile
5K PR reduced by 2 minutes 24 seconds

It's possible that the official time may be a second or two faster when it's posted.

It was a fairly large 5K race for this area and even though we arrived nearly an hour ahead of the start, we snagged one of the last spaces in the close-in parking area. Remember to arrive early for this club's races, they're well-run and popular!

The course was fully within a small park which was evidently once a working farm. I warmed up along the last mile of the course, which was helpful because it gave me a preview of what the finishing stretch would look like.

The course was intelligently planned, with the first mile along a 2-lane road which gave us runners a chance to spread out before we entered the paved trail which constituted the final two miles of the race.

It was moderately rolling terrain but no terrible steep hills. I started out running hard and I did everything I knew how to keep running as hard as I could the whole way.

I only looked at my watch once during the race, at the one-mile marker. It confirmed my impression of the pace: 8:55, which is a one-mile PR for me. Whew. OK, that means I have to keep running as hard as I can for 2.1 more miles.

I heard Joe Bator in my head: "Use your arms to pull yourself up the hills." I pulled.

I heard Debi Bernardes in my head: "Pick up your cadence." I picked it up.

I heard my training buddy Dave in my head: "Stop dragging your feet." I picked them up too.

I heard Bob Mina in my head: "You learned how to run in pain." I felt pain and ignored it.

I heard Kurt Egli in my head: "JFR." I just friggin' ran.

I left nothing on the course. I don't think I could have run it a single second faster today.

Interestingly, my heart rate (blue line) and pace (bottom red line) all rose and fell in lock-step with the grade (top red line). I tried to come over the top of each rise running strong, pick up the pace on the crest of the hill and then use the downhills to let gravity give me some free speed.

The result at the finish line was the fastest running I've done since my twenties (and I no longer have those finish times, so I may even be faster now). It was by far my best age-graded result (60%).

The good news is that a solid running PR sets off my 2008 with a bang!

The bad news is that my time predicts that I may be able to take off ten more minutes from my half marathon PR next month. I've still got a lot of miles of hard running yet ahead of me.

Bring it on.

My PR list

After months of being unable to log in to my personal website, thanks to Comcast "improvements", I finally dug and clawed my way in. My list of personal records is now finally updated.

Watch that space, because I'm hoping they'll change in 2008!!

So close. . . .

Nope, I still didn't quite crack that one-hour 10K barrier!

But I'm creeping up on it.

Today's 10K was 1:00:41 at the Oxford Day 10K on Maryland's Eastern Shore. 5K split was 30:02. Beautiful weather for running - mid-50s and partly cloudy.


It's a conspiracy! I guess I'll have to run at least one more 10K and 5K each in my lifetime to hit those 60/30 minute benchmarks! THEN I can retire from running for good!

Still, my previous 10K PR was from this race last year (not exactly the same course) in 1:03:17, so it was a pretty darned good running day for me, all in all. I ran the whole race without looking at my Garmin once, just as an experiment, but I don't think it helped me, to tell the truth. I had a higher average heart rate in my last half marathon (174, vs. 170 today). I think I do better when I check my pace and heart rate periodically during the race, rather than just pacing by perceived effort. Although my pace was quite consistent during the race (except for Mile 3 which included a brief walk at a water stop), I think I could have pushed slightly harder with this HR information:

Mile 1: 9:34, HR 160 bpm
Mile 2: 9:34, HR 170 bpm
Mile 3: 10:09, HR 169 bpm
Mile 4: 9:39, HR 172 bpm
Mile 5: 9:46, HR 173 bpm
Mile 6: 9:26, HR 175 bpm
Mile 6.28: 2:39 (9:32 mpm pace), HR 178 bpm



I was 69th/92 runners, I think. Picked up a big honkin' trophy for 1st place Clydesdale Filly, too! I was the only one who entered the division, but hey! You have to enter to win!!

If my birthday were 2 months earlier, I could have taken a 2nd place age group award, but instead I have to wait to age up into the 50-death age group.

I love small town races! Very fun to see lots of friends out on the course today, including the Dave and Chuck Comedy Team (both of whom had great races too)!! Plus we all enjoyed the traditional Oxford Day post-race pancake breakfast this year again. Yum!

Five half marathons for my fiftieth year

The summary:

• B&A Half Marathon, 04 Mar 07, Severna Park, MD, 36*F, 9 mph wind, sunny. 2:26:38.
  
• National Half Marathon, 24 Mar 07, Washington, DC, 53*F, 5 mph wind, misty. 2:28:08.
  
• Cherry Pit Ten Miler (1:48:52) plus 5K (39:15), 01 Apr 07, Annapolis, MD, 50*F, 6 mph wind, overcast. 2:28:07.
  
• Ocean City Half Marathon, 07 Apr 07, Ocean City, MD, 38*F, 9 mph wind, light snow. 2:27:04.
  
• Bridge to Bridge Half Marathon, 21 Apr 07, St. Michaels, MD, 54*F, 2 mph wind, sunny. 2:19:28.

Total distance: 65.5 miles.
Total time: 12:09:25 (over 7 weeks).
Average pace: 11:07 min/mile.
Previous fastest half marathon: March 2006 B&A, 2:36:23.
Number of new PRs set: 3.
Reduction in half marathon time: 16:55.

It was FUN!!!!

Many thanks to my wonderful training buddies Chuck and David for doing 4 and 5 of these events with me, respectively!

I believe!

Thanks for all the great advice and encouragement, everyone!!

I ran a 2:19:2x half marathon this morning, good enough for a plaque for 3rd female 40-49 in a very, very small field.

That's a 7-minute PR for me!!

My half marathon time came down a total of 17 minutes in 2007 (so far) in my series of five half marathons in seven weeks. That's five out of five DONE under 2:30, each and every one!!!

Yes, I did take along the Garmin, and it actually helped my pacing enormously because the entire race after Mile 4 there was no one in sight in front of me.

Bath now, long report with photos some time later.

Ocean City results up!

I believe that we have 3 PRs out of 3 runners!
http://www.runwashington.com/results/searchable.html

My chip time was a 5-second PR!!! Yay!! 2:26:33. 11:11 min/mile pace, 186/223 women (83%), 13/16 women 45-49 (81%).

5 seconds faster than the B&A Trail Half Marathon at which they paced me just 5 weeks ago, when it felt like I was dying for the last 3 miles trying to get to that finish line. This race was much more comfortable - I guess this training stuff really works, eh?

So PRs all around for my training buddies Dave (1:45:07) and Chuck (1:54:54), and ME!! I guess we do some of our best running on the thin edge of hypothermia.

Now the challenge is on for me and David in 2 weeks, to see how much either of us can beat our PR on the flattest course around. Let's just hope the wind is from the southwest. And no snow, please. Chuck is going off to do some silly triathlon thing or 'nother....

This is what the race result calculator predicts for me now:
5K 0:31:33
5M 0:52:05
10K 1:06:05
10M 1:49:06
Half Marathon 2:26:33
Marathon 5:06:56

Hmm. I've beaten that 10 mile and 10K time. Haven't done any 5K nor 5 mile races in a while, but I'm pretty sure that I could beat those times now. I'm always slower than the prediction the longer the distance. But the main thing is that it shows I definitely have some work yet to do before I can run a sub-5-hour marathon. I need to get that half marathon time down below 2:23 or thereabouts to have a real hope of a sub-5 marathon finish. Below 2:20 would be better. OK, the challenge is on for this summer's training!

Race Report: 2007 B&A Trail Half Marathon

Here they are, Chuck and Dave, pace buddies extraordinaire, who kindly escorted me to a nearly 10-minute half marathon PR today at the B&A Trail Half Marathon in Severna Park, Maryland! Thanks so much, guys!! My chip time was 2:26:38.65, pace 11:12 min/mile, placing me 24th out of 28 in my age group (85%), and 538th/611 overall (88%).

We all wore Garmin Forerunner 305s, but I managed to screw up the data on mine badly by not turning it off correctly at the finish line. Nevertheless, here (below) are some CHARTS!

The course satellite map is below in solid blue - out and back along a paved rail-trail. They slightly altered the course this year which cut out some hills and made it a little faster. That's the Severn River just south and parallel to the race course, and part of Annapolis, Maryland toward the southern end of the map.

Pace data: We were trying to maintain an even 11:00 min/mile average, and were very comfortably below that starting out, but then fatigue set in after some accumulated mileage and I couldn't quite hold the pace. I was really struggling the last few miles, but Chuck and Dave kept encouraging me to STAY STRONG!

I messed up the Garmin data a bit by hitting the lap counter wrong and not stopping it, but the data on the first few miles don't look like we started quite as fast as the chart above suggests, but we probably did go out a few notches too fast.


So I did my best, despite some alarmingly high heart rates toward the end of the race! That was definitely the best that I could do today! So I believe that my new half marathon PR time won't be soon broken!


THANKS AGAIN for a great race and excellent companionship today, guys! Let's do it again some time - but not too soon! I'm whupped!

Catching up on the road

Way too much time off this week with sick kids and ice storms and general slackness. Four days in a row with no significant workouts - I really don't like taking off that much time!! Back out on the roads today for seven twisty-turny miles around the neighborhood:

Average pace for 7.01 miles, according to Ms. Garmin, was 11.51 min/mile. If I can keep that pace up on the B&A Trail Half Marathon in 2.5 weeks, that will give me a PR by 1 solid minute. But I'm definitely not counting any PR chickens yet! PRs are gifts from the Race Gods and happen according to their whim. PRs can be prepared for, the groundwork can be laid for them, but they cannot be summoned at will. But it should help a lot to have my training buddy David there who has volunteered to pace me, I hope! He does a pretty good job of flogging me along!

Good news! I found out a runner-mom is organizing a marathon training group from April to October to benefit the local after-school program. Since I was planning on running Marine Corps Marathon this fall anyway, this may be a great opportunity to line up some more local running buddies and get to know a few more of my neighbors - and maybe even follow a consistent and logical marathon training program for a novel approach for my 10th marathon! I checked her past results on Athlinks (I LOVE that site!) and she's done Marine Corps in a not-too-shabby 4:32. I'd better call her tomorrow!