Well tomorrow is the Fort Garry Rotary Club half marathon – just thought I would put up some thoughts on where I am and what my game plan is for tomorrow.
It looks like I will go into the race tomorrow about 4-5 pounds lighter than I was for the Run for Diabetes Research on Sept 2nd – this should help – depending on what web site you believe this should shave off 1-2 minutes for my time. Every little bit helps but we will see.
I have been training harder and faster on the treadmill and getting in my miles outside too – for the 3 weeks between the 2 races I show that I have done about 20 miles more than scheduled where as for the 3 weeks prior to the September 2nd race I was actually just about 7 miles short with both periods having similar miles scheduled. So I am definitely trained more solidly and consistently than with the last race but that also raises the chance that I am over-trained and could be fatigued. I feel pretty good right now but how I crashed last night and this morning potentially raises a warning flag. (see here for more details) My records show that in the compared 3 weeks periods my pace on both the treadmill and outdoor runs went up around 0.1 mph – not a huge change but could be a factor considering I am only 3:43 off of my personal best right now. Once again I won’t know for sure until tomorrow.
One interesting thing is that this race indicates that they have mile markers every mile (along with a few km markers) – with the last race they were reversed with km markers and the occasional mile marker (but I didn’t see any of the mile markers). Since I train and use miles for my pace and distance measurements this will help me know if my Garmin is off on the miles. On the Run for Diabetes my Garmin indicated 13.4 miles at the end instead of 13.1 and with how I was pacing the extra 0.3 miles would have almost been enough to catch my personal best and if I had known that my watch appeared to be off I might have pushed harder to make that happen. So with this one I hope that having the constant mile markers to look at and confirm that I will be able to push harder – hope so anyway…
Weather should almost be identical between the 2 weekends so that shouldn’t be a factor.
With the last race I had a lot of nervous energy at the start and I let that out at the beginning and then dug deep and kept pushing after the initial surge was gone. This is kind of backwards in comparison to the way you should race – by holding something back at the start so you have extra drive at the end. So I want to say that I will hold back a little tomorrow at the start and then push harder after but I suspect that I will push too hard at the start again and drag at the end – it is a bit of a habit at this point. If I am able to hold back a bit then go harder in the second half of the race this could be a factor. Tomorrow we will see.
Confidence – I did not know what to expect in the Run for Diabetes research so breaking under 1:50 and getting so close to my personal best was a major surprise – I finished that feeling well, so if you throw that knowledge into the mix I should have the confidence to push harder. There are a couple risks with that though – I could push too hard and hurt myself or drain too early and get a worse time that I should or I could get cocky and not push hard enough. I guess I’m waiting to see on this one.
The course is a bit of mystery to me as well – I haven’t done this race or most of the roads involved before so they will be a bit of a surprise too.
This is only the second running of this race too so there is the potential for some organizational issues to be dealt with which could factor in – the race packet pickup was relatively smooth for me but there did seem to be quite a bit of delay between when they said they would get the packet pickup info out to when it actually did (didn’t get actual packet pick up info until last week). I don’t know if that bodes ill or not though.
So not a lot of certainty here and when you are playing with such a relatively small amount of time over such a long distance something like even a loose shoe lace could blow my chances at a personal best on this race.
On the positive side I am hydrated well and well fueled right now without any ongoing aches or pains that I am worried about. My legs feel great and on my short run this morning my hips felt a bit stiff at the start but they loosened up quickly and don’t show a problem.
Basically, on paper at least, I should be going into this race with the potential to catch to my personal best of 1:46:11 – conditions and conditioning should be right. But there are so many loose factors and any combination of them going slightly off kilter would probably blow my shot for that race.
There is the temptation that I maybe don’t need to push as hard this race and save my personal best record breaking attempt until the Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic Services half marathon on October 19th – but I have to fight that temptation. With the Goofy Challenge a known thing now that I need to train for I will want to make sure I am not skipping longer training runs to concentrate on speed work for the shorter runs. Plus there is the thought that if I can just beat my personal best on this one…what could I do in another 4 weeks if I can keep the weight loss occurring? The what if’s are going to keep me going here.
Wow – just broke over 1000 words – must be nervous or something – thanks for sticking with me until the end of this one…
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