IN Palm Springs

spent yesterday and most of today with anders in Manhattan Beach--awesome time....great sushi last night!

Drove the 122 miles out to palm springs and drove the course this evening. Interesting course for sure. The most noticeable thing is the 71 (!!!!!!!!!) turns--thank goodness it's not a bike course--it averages 5.5 truns per mile...you rarely run in a straight line for as much as a half mile. I'm not sure how that translates speed wise, but it's very different than the B&A with it's 6-7 turns....

The course is considerably hillier than I anticipated. I went to the USAT database and it's plotted at 13.18 miles or about 420 feet longer than a true half-marathon. It has a total of 876 feet of elevation change--equally split between up and down.

The first two miles are a steady climb. Then from mile 2 to 3.5 you give back all of that initial gain in altitude. then the meat and potatoes of the course--from 3.5 to 6.5, it steadily climbs from 450 feet up to 630. the next mile is a series of rollers and then from 7.5 out to just short of 9.5 a nice fast downhill section. The last almost 4 miles are basically flat.

So strategy wise, I'm going to try to negative split the race. I try to be conservative all the way through the half-way point when the rest of the course is either down-hill or flat. I'd like to be averaging somewhere between 7:45 and 8/mile over the first half and try to hit 7:30 to 7:45 on the way home--with any luck this would average out to 7:45ish.

Of course, my current half-marathon fitness is a real question mark. this will be the longest I've run since Kona, four plus months ago. I'm going to carefully monitor my HR--especially on the climbs and try to keep it close to 160 bpm, and certainly under 165. If this means a slower pace than "my strategy", well, I'll take my medicine and vow to train harder in the weeks ahead.....

Should be interesting!!!