Psycho Cookie: A training diary

Today I pulled the trigger and registered for the Atlantic City Half Marathon. It’s this coming Sunday and I figured since I’ll be in Jersey for get together with some old college friends I might as well sign up for a race while I’m there.

The course is pretty much dead flat, with a good portion of it being on the boardwalk itself. So if you consider that on top of being only like 10 feet above sea level I should be able to do pretty well. I’m looking at it as the best indicator to whether I’m in better shape now as compared to years ago. The only other half marathon I’ve run is the Seaside Heights Half back in 2003. Where I got a 2:04, but hadn’t trained for it and really hadn’t been a runner since 1999.

This pas Saturday I did what you typically would not do a week before a race. I rode 15 miles to Denver on my bike, then went and ran 13.2miles. The first 9 miles I ran with Shelby and Erin, we then stopped to meet up with the running group and then I went and ran the remaining 4.2 miles. At the 13.1mile mark my time was 1:58, so I guess I kind of ran a sub 2 hour half marathon already. But there was a 10-15minute break after mile 9. But that probably didn’t help much. The first 9 miles were done at a 9 minute mile pace, then the next few were down near 8:30 until finally it crept back up towards 10minute miles during the last mile.

So how will I do with a flat course at sea level? I’m not sure. My preliminary thought is to start out with an 8:15minute/mile for the first 6.55miles, which will put me at 54 minutes half way through. Then I’ll pick up the pace for the 2nd half and drop to 8minute miles making the second half 52.4minutes, giving me a 1:46:26 total time. So that will be my basic goal, but I might decide to start out with an 8 minute mile for the first half and then see about a 7:45minute/mile pace for the second half… that altitude difference might make that possible. I’m just worried about not going fast enough during the first half of the race, because right now I have the endurance but not the speed to make up the time I’d lose. Who knows though… altitude can be a huge benefit and I might be able to do something crazy like 7:45s & 7:30s and end up sub 1:40.

We’ll see… stay tuned.

Sunday was my first 5k race I’ve done since high school. With my old PR being 18:17 from back then I didn’t expect anything like that this time. The race was the Marine Corps Memorial 5k in Golden, CO. It was more of a 5k-ish race, just under 3 miles, so my time of 23:37 is even less impressive because of that.

My first mile was a 7:31, which started out as a sub 7, which I knew was say to fast, so I had to back it off quickly. The second mile was an 8:20 and the last mile was a 7:43. Considering it’s at 6k feet in elevation, it was 30 degrees, sleeting and then snowing, and I had run 7.5 miles and biked 25 miles the day before… I’d say I can improve a lot.

My next 5k will actually be this Saturday on Halloween morning. It’s the Gorilla Run 5k, so I’ll be dressed in a gorilla suit along with everyone else. I definitely don’t expect any kind of PR for that one.

I finally pulled the trigger and bought the Garmin FR 305. I’d have loved to get teh 310XT, but since it’s double the price I just couldn’t pull that trigger. The 305 is awesome though, I’m just working on figuring out which sites to use to upload my data to. There’s so many to choose and each have different features, but nothing has it all.

I do hate that it’s not really feasible to use the Garmin with linux very well. Even the Garmin Connect web site doesn’t work with Linux. Well technically if you install firefox for windows under wine and the Connect plugin it works. That’s going to have to be the best I can do. And then save them all off and upload them to sites like mapmyrun and beginnerTriathlete.com

I’ve started to get back into training again after some time ‘off’. At this point I feel like I haven’t done enough that week if all I do is 15 miles of running, 50miles of biking and a mile or two of swimming. It’s funny to think that my ‘lazy’ week has become excessive for most people in the world, I never intended that but it just kind of became that way.

I’ve started to plan out next years schedule. It’s looking like it’ll be a busy one as well as an expensive one. Some of the events I plan on doing include a team for the 24 hours of Utah run, the Colorado Marathon, the Bolder Boulder 10k, the San Diego Marathon (still considering this and being pressured to do it by some friends), the 5430 sprint tri, the Boulder Peak Oly tri, the Xterra Indian Peaks tri, the Boulder 70.3, the Harvest Moon HIM, a team for the 24 hours of Moab Mountain bike race, the Denver Marathon (soon to be referred to as the Rock and Roll Denver Marathon or something like that), and then the big one… the Arizona Ironman!

Talk about one heck of a season…. 3 marathons, 2 Half Ironmans, a Full Ironman, 2 24hour races, and a number of other shorter events. Should make for a really fun year. Especially if I mix in some events like the Elephant Rock century ride or something similar.

Here’s some of my early season aggressive goal times for some of the events:

Colorado Marathon: 3:40 (~8 1/2 minute miles)
5430 Sprint: 1:25 (14min swim, 22mph bike[47min], 22min 5k, 2 1/2 min for T1&2)
San Diego Marathon: 3:30 (~8 minute miles… 7:15s are needed to qualify for Boston)
Boulder Peak: 2:23 (26min swim, 22mph bike[1:11.5], 43.5min 10k, 2 min T1&2)
Boulder 70.3: sub 5 hours, bike should be easier than HM was, and my running should be a LOT faster now
Harvest Moon: sub 5 hours (drop 2 1/5 minutes swimming, 32 minutes in the run [8min miles], and 5 minutes on the bike [average 20.8mph instead of 20.0])
24 Hours of Moab: sub 1:30 laps… try to drop a 1:20 on the last lap.
Denver Marathon: 3:40
Ironman Arizona: Sub 10 1/2 hours.

So post race is harder than you think.  You’ve been in a routine for months and all of the sudden you need to recoup.  You just can’t do the volume of activity you had done previously.  Your body needs rest, but mentally you’re still wanting to get out there and swim/bike/run.  So you do your best, you try to stay a little active still, but your performance will be lacking for a week or two.

It’s been two and a half weeks since my race now.  I’m feeling better and have started to aim my training towards my weakness… my run.  Saturday and Saturday night I went and helped a friend’s husband do the 24 Hours of Triathlon solo.  Scott Swaney… he’s definitely in a league of his own.  18 sets completed while the next closest was around 14.  He wanted to get 20, but that would be 2 Ironman distances, plus all the extra running to and from the water every 400meters.

I camped out at the 24 Hours of Triathlon, woke up and went to my 5k race.  The Das Hustlehoff 5k/10k for Oktoberfest.  I only chose to do the 5k because I wore my lederhosen and fondu outfit, otherwise it would have been the 10k.  But Sunshine joined me as well. The photographer that took the picture to the right obviously doesn’t own a pet or run with his pet.  He pretty much sucked at being a race photographer based on other pictures I saw.

My time for the race was SLOW… 26:06, but considering Sunshine would mess up my stride, pull on my arm and make my back sore occasionally, and I had to stop to pick up her mid-race poop in the middle of the road around mile 2.2

Sunshine was the first 4 legged finisher though!

Here’s some other good images from the race, you can click on them to see them full sized.