Race Report - Davis Stampede

I did my first “race” of the year and boy was it a nice day to run! Love early spring in Northern California. After a season last year of two Ironman distance races and no events less than 4-5 hours, a race where you are pushing your limits for about an hour and 20 minutes is somewhat painful (but in a good way). I hadn’t been running much after last season and then started ramping it up recently again around mid-December and then even more when I added a March marathon to my 2011 schedule. In addition, I hadn’t done an open half-marathon for two years and didn’t really know what to expect. My PR for the distance was 1:22:15 and I did that on a flat, fast course (Shamrock'n) in West Sacramento in 2009. This course in Davis was also supposed to be flat and fast, so I figured I could come close to that. The X-factor was how I would respond after a couple of heavier weeks of running and a very short taper / recovery leading into the race.

Warmup consisted of a few dynamic stretches and a light jog with my friend Bernhard, who was also running. My strategy for the day was to go out at about 6:20 per mile and then try to bring it into the 6:10-6:15 range for the last 7-8 miles and see how that felt. Then in the last 2, I was hoping to really push. I really wanted to focus on learning how to run with discomfort, stay inside my own head, not focus on how long till I can stop, and not let any negative thoughts take over. The power of positive thinking can go a long way and I wanted to make sure I stayed on top of the mental game this time around. Push myself into discomfort and then hold it there and learn to deal with it. From a nutrition standpoint, my intention was to have a gel about 20-30 minutes before start and then have another gel about half way. At each aid station, I would attempt to get a swig or two of water or Gatorade down. For a race that’s less than an hour and a half, you can get away with less. Plus, I had recently had some metabolic testing done and know that at this approximate pace I burn 18-20 calories per minute with about 5 of those calories being from fat and ~15 of those calories being from CHO. At 15 calories per minute and 80 minutes, I knew I would burn through about 1200 calories of CHO. I should have plenty of “juice” for that effort, especially with a gel 20 minutes before hand and a good breakfast 2-3 hours before the race.

I lined up with my friend about 3-4 people back from the front line and we waited for just a few minutes to the start. At the start, I took it out fairly hard to try to get around some people and then tried to find a groove. The first time I looked at my watch, I was around a 6 minute pace – a touch fast, so I needed to settle in to a steadier effort. I started early on with my internal dialogue (“relaxed, calm, focused, strong”) and tried to focus on that for a while and just run at a “comfortably uncomfortable” pace. It was a bit windy, but the course has a lot of turns so sometimes you were going with a nice tail wind and sometimes you were right into a stiff headwind. For the hard sections into the wind, I was trying to get behind people as best as possible. But the 10k’ers turned off pretty early and the race thinned out. There wasn’t really anywhere to hide, so I just rolled along. I didn’t get passed in the 2nd half of the race, which was nice, and I gradually creeped up on and passed about 3-4 more guys in the 2nd half.

Mile splits are below. I'm pretty frustrated with the HR data from my Garmin – I thought I had that fixed, but I still get junk HR data, even after changing the battery. I think my HR was in the high 160s through most of it and then raised into the 172-175 range by the end. From a pacing standpoint, mile 2 was my slowest, and miles 3, 4, 5, and 6 I tried to remain steady in my 6:20-ish pace. According to my watch, I was a little fast, but the mile markers didn’t match my watch exactly, there seemed to be about a 5 second discrepancy. Mile 8 was slower mostly because it was windy and I was on my own and it was getting hard to maintain that pace.

1 00:06:06
2 00:06:21
3 00:06:16
4 00:06:12
5 00:06:16
6 00:06:11
7 00:06:09
8 00:06:18
9 00:06:12
10 00:06:11
11 00:06:05
12 00:06:14
13 00:06:11
14 00:01:22

Around miles 7 and 8, I was working pretty hard to NOT think about the finish and how long I had left… staying focused on the internal self-talk and staying positive about being “relaxed, calm, focused, and strong.” It worked pretty well and I maintained a steady pace. Around mile 10 and 11, I started heading back towards town and passed 1 or 2 more people. The last two miles were tough; I was breathing harder (although still mostly in an every two step pattern), my legs were starting to really fatigue, but I still hung onto a <6:15 pace. Last time I ran a hard half-marathon, I was doing about 6:20-6:25 at the end so I really wanted to hang tough those last 2 miles. I rolled back into town and a guy told me he thought I was about 9th or 10th overall (it turned out he missed a few people). I made the last two turns, continued to push hard, and rolled to the finish in what I thought was a little under 1:22. Turns out they had me at 1:22:05 for a 10 second PR (3rd AG and 13th OA). My watch had me at 6:10/mile and a 13.22 mile run so it is either a little off or the course was a touch long. Regardless, I was satisfied with how the race went – I think I dealt with the discomfort better than I had before and next time around I can build on this... In summary, a good experience racing on a beautiful day with a good result.