Race report: 37th Schuylkill River Loop Run
Post Race Thumbs Up!
The time change has been difficult. Getting out of work at 5pm and running when it’s pitch black is kinda demoralizing. Perhaps the darkness is the reason I have been a little down lately too? Maybe it’s the combination of 25% school, 20% personal life, 30% work, and 15% weather. My motivation has been to put it at best: pathetic. I feel all these things draining my energy to the point where I stay up late to work out in the morning and too tired to workout in the evenings. It’s a vicious circle. Trying to break it.The purchase of the Mac helped and having my first Ipod was great, but I’ve been looking at my bike attached to the trainer every morning, and just say, “nope, not today”. However, I have learned that my bike attached to the trainer is useful as mock clothes dryer such as my wet towel after I take a shower.
November 22nd is the Philadelphia Marathon. I”m not running, but I will be volunteering at a water station all day. I think it’s important to volunteer in athletic events. It’s more of a “pay it forward” or “karma” kind of deal. Maybe that’s a little silly but volunteering at the Philly Triathlon last year really helped my race performance after seeing so many people make the same mistakes over and over again. The weekend before the Philly Marathon, there is a last warm up race which is a good taper run in a competitive environment.
The only running I’ve been doing is on Wednesdays where I go to the track and do speed intervals with a local triathlon club. Before I went into the doldrums, I was running very often, sometimes twice a day, averaging 40 miles a week. Since I’ve been in this state, I haven’t ran, biked, swam, and no lifting. No nothing. So, I signed up for the race in hopes it would get my ass in gear…provide that spark. Sometimes we just need a push to get moving (unless you are my car). I had been averaging 6:50 minute 800 meter repetitions on Wednesdays and I really hoped that this depression I was in could be used as a taper for this race. My goal was to run it around a 7:45 minute mile and hope that it would feel easy.
Yep, that's me.
Now, unlike my other posts where I try to build up the race and tell you my time at the end, I’ll go ahead and mention now I finished the course in 1:08.21 and I finished 96th out of 260. However, I’m upset because during my race I was pacing myself based on my Polar 625x foot-pod that was telling me I was running 7:30-7:45 minute miles. The time I finished was about a 8.1 minute mile. My watch told me I ran a total of 9 miles, not 8.4…that’s not even close! After the race, I retired my Heart Rate Monitor. Therefore, I’m now in the market for a new brand; I’ll probably go with a Garmin.
Overall the run felt great besides the last 200 meters when I tried to pick it up at the end (I absolutely have finishing kick) but the overall disappointment is that my training distances and intensity have been off.
I mentioned my new mac. I thought I’d play with the new imovie application… Yes, I took a camera with me to the race and recorded most of it. I thought it’d be fun. So instead of me going through and talking about the race course, which was rather uneventful…I figured it’d be better to watch. Comments are always appreciated.
Ken
Shawn said:
Nov 20, 09 at 11:15 amits an honor to be in the video ken, and you ran very well that day, so be proud…i was shooting for a 1:07 and thats exactly where i landed, but as the race was going on i had visions of a 1:05 because i felt good about my stride…no regrets on the slow start mentality though, had no idea the course was as flat and uneventful as you pointed out…still, i’d love to make that a semi-regular training location…looking forward to running with you again
Owen said:
Dec 14, 09 at 10:24 pmHi Ken,
Really liked your advice about volunteering and being able to observe and learn from the mistakes of others.
I was wondering, are you keeping a log of your perceived effort compared to the data from your toys? Just that it could be really useful to you, like when your HRM is a bit dodgy or if it gives up the ghost altogether half way through a full ironman.
Ken said:
Dec 14, 09 at 11:44 pmWhile I was in between HR monitors, I was just running on perceived effort for a change. I think the problem I had with training this year was that I was training too much in the grey zone on my long runs. So I was never really recovering properly because I was going to hard on my easy long days and perhaps too easy on my hard days. So for example, on my 16 mile run this morning, my average HR was 140. Last year, I would have ran that at a 155-160. That’s too hard IMO. Perhaps I didn’t have my training zones correctly, I”m not sure, but I’m definitely taking it easier on my long runs, while killing myself on my interval days.