and we both finished!
Brian – 10:34:21
Jason – 11:42:39
Full report when we get back from South Africa.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Peeps – the race has officially started! Chariots of Fire has been played and the recording of the guy imitating a rooster has played. We are on our way. Check out the Comrades website. They have been advertising live streaming coverage along with a ‘Follow your runner’ section. I know you’ve been waiting with baited breath! My number is 29218. I ran 3.93 miles Tuesday morning, my last run of this training cycle. The bulk of my training (apart from some tempo runs and the races) was based on time, not distance, so an odd distance like this isn’t unusual for me. However, in this case I planned to run this exact distance. Why? Because that gave me an even 1000 miles covered while training for Comrades. Here’s my training by the numbers: 1000 – Total miles run Like many workplaces in America, my own has a group of people obsessed with sports. There’s a golf league, legions of Cardinal fans, plenty of Rams haters, Blue Note followers, and even a few cricket enthusiasts. For the big events, we even have contests – fantasy football, March Madness brackets, Superbowl squares, etc. So I was more then excited when I found out there was a ‘Guess his time contest’ going on for my trip to Comrades. That’s right, these coworkers are guessing my finish time and the closest to the correct time wins a fabulous prize. Probably something green. So that inspired me to host my own contest. I typically don’t do this – seems like just an attention grabbing device in order to get bunches of people to comment on the blog. Wait a minute. That’s exactly my goal! So here’s the deal – post a comment with your guess of my finish time for Comrades. Hours, minutes, seconds. Closest to the correct time wins a Comrades’ themed prize from South Africa. Maybe a tech shirt that says, “A guy who’s blog I read ran Comrades and all I got was this lousy shirt.” Also, one other random entrant will win a second prize – possibly as good as this one. If for some unbelievable reason, I don’t finish, both prizes will be awarded randomly. Post by Saturday at 10:30 PM to be eligible for the race guess, but all comments will be entered in the random drawing. Sunday was that time again – the annual 5K sponsored by the St. Louis Zoo Friends. This was the 25th year the run was held and I’ve participated in 8% of those runs. Kind of amazing that they don’t treat me like one of the elites. This is really a cool late spring event. The Zoo Friends do a great job organizing the race, including a continental breakfast post-race. Also, the tee shirt was much better then last year, although that isn’t saying much. Last year’s tee was ranked among the ten ugliest 5K shirts ever produced. My only two complaints this year: 1) the weather (80 degrees/70% humidity at race start) and 2) the course (they decided to lay it out with more hills this year). Last year the course was a flat out and back. Since I had done all this distance and hill work for Comrades, I figured I’d just dial up a PR for the race. I laid down a 22:10 in the Undy 5K earlier in the year without putting in ridiculous effort so I figured a sub 21:10 would be reasonably achievable. I started at the front with the fast people, right behind the lady with the 7:00 minute/mile sign. I figured that would keep me from going out too fast. Wrong! The air horn went off and so did the runners. I had rested excessively the last couple of weeks so I just let it go. At the ½ mile mark, my Garmin told the tale – 6:00 minutes per mile. Doh! After that, I slowed down considerably. Maybe the cause was partly psychological, but mostly physical. At one mile the volunteer was calling splits, “6:24, 6:25, 6:26…” I started near the front so the splits were pretty accurate. Mile two proved to be a struggle. The hills were packed into that mile and my three minute half mile reared its ugly head. Splits at two miles were “13:44, 13:45…” Now it was time to just hold on for dear life. I got a little lift when I caught up to a young lady and her dad. They had started very fast, but were walking at 2.5 miles. I heard him tell her, “All we have to do is make it to this turn and then straight home.” But I chugged past and put my head down. Not a quarter mile down the course, they blow my doors off like I’m barely moving. Oh well, that’s all I had so there you go. I sucked it up and crossed the line with the game clock reading around 21:50ish. My final official time was 21:42. My second fastest 5K ever, but it wasn’t enough. I finished fourth in my age group, 21 seconds behind the third place runner, the dad from above, missing out on the stuffed cheetah. Next year Zoo Friends, next year! Next Sunday I’ve got 18 consecutive 5Ks on the schedule. If I can hold the 7 minute per mile pace, I’ll finish a shade under 6.5 hours. Yesterday, my first cousin once removed, Fr. Tony, visited the clan in St. Louis, while driving thru on vacation. I organized the tribe (Jason, Rocio, Kim, Cynthia, Wes, Val, Kathy, and I) and we met for dinner at Espino’s. Tony also invited another couple who he knew and we had a great time catching up. We don’t get together very often so there was very lively conversation up and down the table. We were arrayed in a long table at the restaurant, so the conversation broke up into two separate discussions. On the west end of the table, the conversation was mostly about travel and work. On the east end, we primarily discussed child rearing. I was grouped up with the east enders leaving me with little to contribute since I have a noticeable lack of kids. But hey, I had a good time listening to the trials and tribulations of parents in the midst of potty training and infant care. Two couples in our group had (together) kids of 3, 1, 1/2, and (~8 months in utero). My main contribution to the conversation consisted of running down their parental skills and declaring they should be watching Jo Frost and learning the right parenting techniques. When you have no kids, you know exactly how they should be raised
My cousin Kim had just gotten back from Istanbul and here we are preparing to head to Africa. It is the spring of exotic trips for the tribe. After dinner, our pleasingly full group talked about this South Africa trip in general and Comrades in particular. We promised to host a get together later in June to share the joys of our trip to the dark continent! Only 9 days to go… I found myself with the GPS data from the Comrade’s course from the 2005 down year race. The course changes slightly each year, but follows the same general route. I did some data analysis (I’m an engineer – its what I do. I might not be able to string three coherent sentences together, but data analysis – Watch out!) with the idea of finding out just how many (and severe) the hills are in this down year. I calculated the total elevation gain over the hills is 4348 feet with a corresponding elevation loss of 6464 feet. It is a down year after all. The course was thoughtfully directed to take place thru the Valley of 1000 Hills. But my data shows that name is clearly an exaggeration. There are only sixty-nine distinct hills in the data. Some of these are either very short (less then .1 mile) or have a slight grade (less then 1%), so I ignored them. That leaves only fifty-six hills of interest, or basically one hill per mile. The longest uphill is early in the race, starting at 8.6 miles, but it is a biggie. It continues for 1.56 miles with an average grade of 4.7%. Unfortunately, that hill leads into a series of four more hills, each with less then a quarter mile of respite between. That total section is 3.56 miles of hills with an average grade of better then 4%. That’s going to suck. The steepest hill, a 6% grade, is short (.11 mile) and located at mile 29.4. No problem – I’ll be over that little knob in a flash! But the next steepest (5.8%) is a third of a mile long beauty designed to break any spirit you have left. It starts after you’ve run 52.6 miles. I guarantee there will be some bastard at the top of that hill yelling ‘last hill.’ But he’ll be lying because there is one more hill before you get to the finish. Here’s the full list of all 56 hills:
Saturday, Jason, Kathy, and I met up in Forest Park to get our last long run in before Comrades. Kathy isn’t even running in the race yet she came down to support the team and put in some distance! Jason and I got on the short (3 mile) hill loop and did our Galloway 9/1 effort for two hours. Almost the entire loop is up or down hills apart from a flat stretch that was directly into a solid head wind. We each held a warm flat Coke – apparently one of the drinks available during The Race. So this was a test to see how that went down. I’m sure the other Forest Park runners wondered what kind of neophyte runners we were – running with Cokes as our liquid of choice. After two hours, we covered 12.59 miles and I felt like I had barely done anything. It was an incredibly easy workout. Kathy banged out two easy loops around the Forest Park perimeter testing out her new shoes. From now to the end, no runs longer then one hour. One last abbreviated hill repeat workout tomorrow, one more tempo run, and a 5K race are my last quality workouts. I’m going to end up with just over 1000 miles of training from November 2nd to Comrades – I think I’m ready to go! Running Banana came thru with flying colors, delivering my Comrades shirt. I put it on for tonight’s 60 minute journey to the Awakening and back. Fits perfectly and I’m sure it will work for the run. My name is on the front, ultra large, which makes me feel a little goofy out training, but any yelled support is appreciated. However, even with the large ‘BRIAN’ on the front, not one bystander yelled my name 6.55 miles in 60 minutes on a rolling hill course. I’ve been doing some analysis of the course and I’ll be sharing it over the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned! |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Copyright © 2010 Team Flash Blog - All Rights Reserved |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
