The Silicon Valley half maration Sunday was my first run over 12k.
According to most running books, I certainly wasn't in condition for
running a half marathon. I'd only been averaging about 12-15 miles per
week of running over the last four months, including no single run of
over 12k.
But the course closure limit for the Silicon Valley marathon was listed
on their web site as at a 15 min/mile pace. I can walk at that pace.
I also get in a bit of mild cross training, mostly ballroom and swing
dancing, but also an occasional long hike of 10 miles or more, so the
distance wasn't a worry for me.
I didn't actually decide to run the half marathon until the afternoon
before the race. The race was nearby; the weather report was good;
and my legs felt fresh, so I went down to the expo and went in to see
if they took late registrations. The first problem was even finding
late registration. The nice volunteers at the half marathon packet
pick up table had no idea if or where there was anyone taking late
registrations. So I just walked around looking until I finally found a
pile of entry forms. Then just a bit farther down I found an unmarked
table where there appeared to be someone collecting forms and money.
The lady took my form and my money, and then told me they were all out
of timing chips and race numbers. She then gave me a 5k number, with the
"5k" inked-out and "1/2" hand-written underneath it. Seems they had
several hundred last minute registrations.
The next problem was figuring out a target pace, since I had never run
more than 12k continuously, and none of the pace calculators take (too low
a) training distance as a variable. But I had to start out at some pace
(walking or running). So I used the following wild guestimate method.
According to my training logs, I was actually in slightly better
shape than in a few previous years where I had run the San Francisco
Bay-to-Breakers 12k at 9 min/mile pace or better. Based on that,
I estimated that I could now run more than 12k, maybe up to 9 miles,
at around 9 min/mile pace, and maybe walk the rest of the 13.1 miles
at hopefully a 15 min/mile pace. Working the math, that adds up to
somewhere around a 2:20 half. So I decided to try starting at an even
pace for that same time goal, about an 11 min/mile pace.
I lined up approximately 3/4th of the way back in the pack at the
starting line since previous race results indicated that some percentage
or participants walked the event. For the first mile or so, I stayed
with the people around me, but then people started passing me. So I
guess I should have lined up even further back in the pack. But in
any case, the first 3 miles took 32:30. After that my legs warmed up,
the cadence I was most comfortable running at went up from around 162
ff/min to 172 ff/min, and I had to start inserting walking breaks to
slow down to my scheduled pace. I think I took about 6 walking breaks
of one or so minutes between miles 3 and 8 (mostly around water stops).
I passed the mile 8 marker at 87 minutes by my watch, nearly on target.
After 8 miles, I realized that the distance remaining was less than
some training runs from prior weeks, so I started picking up the pace
to whatever felt natural. After mile 10, I increased my cadence to 180
ff/min and ran an 8:20 mile; that was too fast. But even after I slowed
back down a bit (but trying to keep my cadence up) I was still passing
runners in bursts all the way to the finish. 2:11:50 line-to-line by
my watch (no chip time, since they were out of chips, and I forgot to
look at the official clock, I was so busy fiddling with my watch.).
Ahead of my estimate, but probably a bit too much of a negative split
for it to have been an optimal time, even for my low training mileage.
In hindsight, I might have been able to omit most of the walking breaks.
Since I would be running longer than 90 minutes total, I tried some
Accelerade at a couple of the aid stations. Seemed to taste OK.
Couldn't figure out what to do with the gel pack they were handing out
at one water stop. I also tried drinking while running through the last
couple water stops, but mostly spilled everything and almost choked once.
So I guess that that's a skill that has to be practiced.
I didn't do a sweats check, since I wasn't sure how it worked. But it
seemed to be well organized, with bags and helpful volunteers at both
the drop-off and pickup.
I set my Fitsense watch/pod for the slowest calibration value I had,
and the distance it reported was accurate within about 1 percent when
compared to the mile markers for the first 8 miles. But once I picked
up my cadence and pace it was much farther off. It only registered
12.9 miles at the finish. I think these accelerometer watches really need
to be able to take multiple pace-dependant calibration value settings.
The Fitsense takes only two, "walk" and "run".
My one complaint about this race was the transportation back for the
people doing the half. The full marathon was an out and back course.
The half ended at the far end of the "out". The event brochure said
there would be buses back, but there certainly weren't enough buses,
and there was no line control when a bus showed up, just runners who
had been standing waiting too long trying to crowd in whenever a bus
finally came and the door opened.
My legs felt a bit tired, but I still went out social dancing for about
an hour the evening after the race.
IMHO. YMMV.
--
Ron Nicholson rhn AT nicholson DOT com http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/
#include <canonical.disclaimer> // only my own opinions, etc.