Race Report - Carlsbad Half Marathon

I went into this race not knowing really what to expect. My PR for the distance is about 1:26 and change, but that was on a downhill course. Last year on a relatively flat course, I did a 1:28 and change on not a lot of run training. This offseason, I've been riding PowerCranks, which supposedly help your running (http://www.powercranks.com/assets/movies/aRunning%20testimonialsdialup.mov), but otherwise, my focus has definitely been swimming and bike power/strength. I've done some higher intensity in the last couple weeks, but not a lot. So all things considered, I wasn't sure how I'd do. My plan was to do the first 3-5 miles at like 6:30 pace to see how I feel and give my self a shot at a PR.

I was a little frantic in the morning because traffic was a little worse than I expected. I also missed out on the last port-o-potty visit, but so it goes. I had also forgotten my race belt, so I had to swing by and get pins before the start. I found some and made my way to the front of the start line for wave 1 with about 5 minutes to spare. No time to warm up. Oh well. The horn blew and I was off. The course was basically an out and back along the coast highway with a few miles from the start at the mall to the ocean and back. It's billed as a flat course, but there are some rollers. Nothing killer, but I wouldn't classify it as flat, either. I made it through the first 2 miles in around 12:30 or so and was feeling pretty good, so I kept at that pace as best I could. After about 5 miles, I was still feeling pretty good and was maintaining my target pace pretty easily with my HR in the low 160s, so I decided to go for it. I upped it a bit as I headed for the turnaround. For miles 2-7 or so, I was trying to stay with this guy in a blue tank top who was really cruising and hung with him for a while. I got to about mile 8 and these two other guys came up behind me and the blue guy went with them as they passed. I probably could've stayed with them, but with 5 miles to go still I didn't want to completely blow up, so I continued along at my pace and focused in on another guy in red. I stayed with that guy all the way. We came back through Carlsbad village and with about 2 miles to go he picked it up a notch so I responded. Then with a mile to go he went even harder and I did my best to stay with him. I was really fatigued over the last 2 to 3 miles and I was definitely feeling the big effort, but I still had something left. So I hit the 13 mile marker and then headed hard around the corner to the finish. He kind of slowed up to wait for a different guy so I took advantage and sprinted to the end and just barely beat him. It's always fun to go hard at the end - that's me trying to stay with those two guys ;-)




Overall, it was a great race. I will probably have a couple of days recovery and that will affect my training for this week, but it was worth it. I cut 4.5 minutes off my time from March of last year and I think I can go down another minute or two by March of this year. My splits were also amazingly consistent, which I was really happy with:

Mile 1 - 6:39 HR 157 (some uphill to go over the freeway)

Mile 2 - 5:39 HR 160 (some downhill, but no idea what happened here!!)

Mile 3 - 6:31 HR 146 (huh?)

Mile 4 - 6:19 HR 163

Mile 5 - 6:32 HR 166

Mile 6/7 - 13:01 HR 166 (missed the mile 6 marker)

Mile 8 - 6:29 HR 165

Mile 9 - 6:30 HR 164

Mile 10 - 6:29 HR 166

Mile 11 - 6:29 HR 167

Mile 12 - 6:38 HR 167 (missed the lap by a few seconds because I grabbed some water)

Mile 13 - 6:05 HR 166

Last 0.1 - 0:42 HR 174

I was pretty happy with all of those 6:29s and 6:30s in a row. Very consistent when I needed to stay focused and on pace.

Overall, this was an excellent race. A very fast field, too. The winner did a 1:02!! My 1:23:58 time was good for 81st out of over 7000 runners and 20th out of 469 in my age group. That time at Shamrock'n would've been good for 13th overall so that gives an idea of the quality of the field. It also had some tri pros - Joanna Zeiger finished 5th in the Women's race!

A great day, a great race, and I'm looking forward to the next event!

Some days...

... are just good training days. I'm not sure exactly why, but this past Sunday, I did my prescribed 3 hour ride followed by my 30 minute run. The ride had some power intervals in my biggest gear followed by the remainder at a moderate pace. I did the intervals and then proceeded down the bike trail cruising along at around 200-230 watts. I ended up averaging 217 watts for the ride and 218 over the last hour. 2 weeks ago on the PowerCranks for a 3 hour ride, I dropped down to a 154 watt average for the last hour. I was much stronger this time around! My hip flexors crapped out last time at around 2:15 into the ride. I did well all the way until about 10 minutes to go this past weekend. Then, for the run, I pushed it a bit and did the entire thing at sub 7-minute mile pace. I was doing around 6:45 or 6:50 pace for the whole thing and my HR was in the 150s and never crossed over 160 for the run. Pretty aerobic for me. All in all, it was a beautiful day and a great workout. Days like that really make this hobby fun!

New progress in a new year

I've been slacking lately for these posts, so I thought I would catch up real quick...

Swimming:
I got in a couple of good weeks for the last 2 weeks at around 10K yds each. Even over our trip to see the in-laws in Illinois, there was a very nice Y I could swim at just literally down the street. When I got back, I did a timed 200 to compare to my original timed 200 when I started with coach. I did it in 3:00 flat, which is about a 12% improvement compared to my original 3:24. If I can improve my race splits by 12%, that will be huge. It's over 3 minutes faster at the half distance and I could possibly get the 2.4 mile swim down to around 1:10-1:15, which was my original goal. Over the long term, I'd like to get down to the 1:05 to 1:08 range, but so far so good on the swim front.

Biking:
I have been gradually building strength and endurance with combined spin/weight workouts and am feeling pretty good. Today, I had a test bike from Wheelworks for my 3 hour ride and I felt pretty good for the hill repeats and then the remainder of the ride. It did feel strange being on "regular" cranks again after 4 months, but I think I've gained a fair amount of power. The test bike was an incredibly sweet setup and now I'm just debating how much $$ I want to spend. See picture below.

I can get a really good deal on this '08 model, but I'm trying to decide if the extra money beyond the B12 or the B2 is worth it. Decision to come soon...

Running:
I had an excellent run this past Friday morning where I covered 10 miles in about 1:15 with big hills (it's kind of hard to run 10 miles around here without doing some pretty big hills). My foot was a little bit sore and tender afterward, so I will have to watch that, but it felt OK on my post-ride run today. I did 4.1 miles in about 0:29 minutes. I've been doing 25-30 mile weeks for the last several weeks, but the upcoming test will be the Carlsbad half-marathon in 2 weeks. I'm thinking about trying to PR it, but may just shoot for sub 1:30.