Sunday, January 23, 2011

It's cold, I'm old, but still close enough for hand grenades?

So today I ventured out into the artic tundra for my first taste of racing in 2011. I awoke this morning and it was 6 degrees--the coldest point of the winter (so far). It warmed a bit by game time but with a 20 mph wind, the wind chill was still low single digits. After registering, I went out for a two mile warm-up jog and discovered that most of the last half of the course was covered in ice and extremely slippery--especially with racing flats! Further, as I looked out at the river, for the first time in my 16 years living in Wilmington, I saw ice skate rink quality ice--I have never seen the lower Brandywine River frozen before! Clearly, this is the longest stretch of very cold weather that I've experienced here in Delaware. Now, my reader in Minnesota (yes I have one) is laughing at me now as it was 22 degrees below zero there this morning but hey, it's too cold to feel really positive about doing a 5k.

The RD saw the ice and made a course change--right call for sure. Unfortunately, this led to a finish that was 52 feet higher than the old course (the one I did last year). The total up-elevation increased from 153 feet to 224 feet--a gain of 69 more feet climbing.

As I mentioned previously, with my ear infection and a heavy training work load, my expectations were low to begin with. With the course change, matching last year's time would be more difficult. Further, last year I was 5 weeks into a speed program and this year's race was to be my very first speed effort....I also made a wrong turn during my warm-up and arrived at the start-line, with a jacked-up HR, just 30 seconds before the start. At least I didn't cool down! I spent 10 seconds being negative--what the f am I doing? I calmed down for 10 seconds and then I thought "lets just get a good tempo run in and see if we can establish where my Vdot and my LTHR is."

The gun went off and off we went, immediately into a hill climb. I spent the first quarter mile fiddling with my iPod (yes I know, if I was serious I wouldn't have one--but this is not serious). Then I settled down and actually felt pretty good (in stark contrast to my warm-up where my legs were lead-like from this weeks training load--more on that latter). Adrenaline is an amazing drug!

The first mile of the course is more down than up and I tried to hold back. I hit the first mile in 6:56 with an average HR of 157. Last year I did a 6:53/159 over essentially the same course. I'm very pleased with that.

The next mile I pushed up to 172 bpm which has historically been my LTHR and was fine until about 1.5 miles or so and then I could feel my lack of speed work--especially my lack of tempo runs...I was having trouble buffering the lactic acid. I hit the 2nd mile with a 7:20/170 average as compared to last year where I was 7:10/172. This tells me that (not surprisingly), I'm not as 5k race ready as I was at this time last year.

The third mile was completely different with the course change and all of the aforementioned extra climbing. It took me 8:08/170 (vs.7:38/172 last year). Now, could running up an extra 69 feet--call it 5 stories add 30-40 seconds to my time? who knows? I do know the 3rd mile was a real struggle, up hill and into a very strong wind (good thing I do this for fun!)

I managed to stop my watch at 22:57 (vs. 22:32 last year). My last tenth of a mile was 33 seconds this year vs 52 seconds last year which with the hastily reconfigured course throws into question all of the splits.

Last year I finished 26th out of 149 (83rd %-tile) and this year I was 29th out of 208 (87th %-tile).

so how did I do? Who knows--probably close enough to last year's effort for hand grenades! I'm mostly inerested in ducking under 1:40 at the Palm Springs Half in on 2/13....untill then this effort strikes me as good enough!

After the race i ran the course again and even caught a number of the walkers just completing the 5k....not something to write home about but we continue to have lower standards in this blog!

As for the week I just finished, it was a good one/optimistic given my fitness/way too much too soon--given your point of view:

I swam 11,150 yards which is the most I have done in a week since the week I raced Kona. the last time I had a regular training week with this much volume was the week of Feb 22, 2010.

Bike-wise (as is my plan) was a pedestrian 176 miles but with two high quality workouts.

On the run, I managed to put in 41 miles this week, which is the first time I've been over 40 since the week of May 24th, 2010. It also marks my 6th consecutive week over 30 miles. I'm cautiously optimistic about this. I'm beginning to feel good on the run and my knee is hanging in there. Despite the ambivalent results of today, and as I am about to embark on an extended speed training phase, I feel like I can really reverse the last few years of run decline--no excuses this year...either I can or I'm just getting old--I'm going to do the work and find out!

Total training time was 21:34, the most since a month before Kona.

So where do we go from here?

I feel pretty good all things considered. I'm trying to jump-up to a higher plane after 3 months of sloth, so I'm inclined to hit it again next week--with lots of run volume and now some speed/a little less swim volume but more quality/continued restraint on the bike but at least 2-3 high quality sessions...probably over 20 hours again. Rolling the dice a bit and then a back-off week the week after....

Good to be in the game and feeling like I have a little juice despite the old and the cold!

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