Tearing up the Track, Trail or Treadmill,4/21(Boston Marathon Day) -4/27

[Tate]

Bill---Have a great race!!

Deb--- Enjoy volunteering!!

Suzanne---I had to laugh about running with your daughter---mine did one 5K and I think it will be a lonnnnggg time before she tries to run again!!

I should have run either yesterday or today, but I worked from 8am til 7pm yesterday and then my dd had a band concert at school that she was in, and today I was very busy with work, so I just skipped it. I am going to the expo tomorrow to get my race number and stuff. Weather looks good for Sunday, but I will have to get up EARLY-----the race starts at 8am and is just over an hour away---YIKES!!!!

[debbiedo]

Boy Miss Tate you are one busy lady. Have fun at the expos. I love expos!I always enjoy being around all the runners and love looking. I never buy much. I did get a pair of shorts and a shirt at Cherry Blossom because I had a great coupon and they cost me so little. I do like looking at everything though.

Volunteering was hectic. Two people didn't show up so we were doing the
t shirts and bags and working hard covering all the sizes. They had upgraded shirts and regular shirts and male and female sizes and cotton shirts for kids doing kids run. I truly earned my jacket I got for volunteering and it is a nice one for wearing around not running in. I also got my upgraded small shirt before they totally ran out( would have been sent to us). Asics messed up the shirt order and is paying to send them to all those who didn't get theirs.

[Jellybean28]

Hello,
Today it is officail! I signed up for the Twin Cities Marathon Oct 5th! My first one! I am so excited. It will be on my hubby's birthday! LOL!
I also signed up for a 5k on Mother's Day. It is Susan G Kommen Race for the Cure. It is in honor of my Grandma who is a survivor.
Right now I am going to keep going keep going with my long distances on Saturdays. During the week I think I am going to work on speed up til the 5k race. I am so excited for both!

GOOD LUCK TO ALL IN RACES THIS WEEKEND!

Kelly

[mrgarak]

I'm back from my first 5K of the year and happy to report it was a success. This is my third Main Street 5K through Sparta. The first was in 2000 during what turned out to be an aborted comeback. My time then was 25:05 (8:04 pace). During my big comeback in 2004, I revisited this course and ran 22:46 (7:19 pace). Now after another 4 years (due to bad weather some years and doing a 10K last year), I have hit the course again for a strong effort.

The race goes through a center section of Sparta and out to back roads. The first mile is mostly flat with a nice downhill not long after the start. I got through the first mile in 6:33. The course continues along the back road section of town and then goes up a small, but steep hill. I had to swing the arms to keep from slowing down too much. After reaching the top, a right turn signals the beginning of the end. The second mile marker lies not far after the turn. I reached it in 13:40 total thus I ran my second mile in 7:07.

The last 1.1 miles for this race is challenging. Where the first mile had the nice downhill, mile three is mostly an incline. It is not very steep, but noticeable. It was during this part of the race, I also faced another challenge - pollen allergies. When the trees bloom and the pollen count goes up, I tend to have trouble breathing. With the tree pollen count high, I was struggling somewhat and felt myself slowing down. However, I didn't slow to a crawl and passed a few people including some teenagers.

I'm not sure what my time was at mile 3 and I hoped to break 22 minutes for my final time. When I turned to the path of the finish and saw the time from a distance, I knew that wasn't going to happen. However, it wasn't the end of the world because I crossed the finish line in 22:08 which averages to 7:07 per mile. This was my fastest for this race and after using the Cool Running Pace Calculator, I saw my time for the final 1.1 was 8:28 which averaged 7:41 per mile. In the end the drop off wasn't bad at all. After the fast 6:33 for the first mile, my drop off for my final pace was 34 seconds per mile. I've had races where I've dropped off over a minute. In addition, I am battling allergies better than 12 years ago. There were times, I felt so bad I couldn't even break 8 minute per mile pace.

After this race, I would say the spring racing season is off to a strong start. After a few weeks, the pollen should be better. Then I can look forward to breaking 22 minutes for some 5K's and do some of the longer races (Sparta 8 miler and Randolph Triathlon come to mind).

I hope everyone is having a great weekend and I look forward to the other race reports.

Dean

[Tate]

Originally Posted by Jellybean28

Hello,
Today it is officail! I signed up for the Twin Cities Marathon Oct 5th! My first one! I am so excited. It will be on my hubby's birthday! LOL!

Kelly

AWESOME!!! That is verrrrrrry exciting!! I am thinking about the Baltimore marathon this year----we'll see. Keep us posted on your training!!!

[mrgarak]

Originally Posted by Jellybean28

Hello,
Today it is officail! I signed up for the Twin Cities Marathon Oct 5th! My first one! I am so excited. It will be on my hubby's birthday! LOL!
I also signed up for a 5k on Mother's Day. It is Susan G Kommen Race for the Cure. It is in honor of my Grandma who is a survivor.
Right now I am going to keep going keep going with my long distances on Saturdays. During the week I think I am going to work on speed up til the 5k race. I am so excited for both!

GOOD LUCK TO ALL IN RACES THIS WEEKEND!

Kelly

Excellent! I look forward to reading about your races. Keep up the great work!

Dean

[Suzanne]

Kelly, I know exactly how you feel. When DH sent me my sign up for Austin....well, that put the pressure on even though it was 6 mos away. It's good to have a goal.

Dean, you just blow me away.

Basically all I've been doing is running up and down the stairs. We have a sort of strange staircase at the dive shop that is a bit narrow and a bit higher steps than normal; we call it the Mayan staircase as it's like many of the pyramids (how did those little ppl go up and down all day?) Today we had our monthly Splash for Trash which includes beach clean up (over 40 jumbo sized biodegradable bags--two full loads of our full sized pick up truck and one overflowing load in the biologists truck.) That definitely counts as exercise. I'll be stiff from bending over and picking up trash for 3 hours. Then the tourists and biologists did a snorkel clean up--dozens of beer bottles, a lawn mower cover (who has a lawn mower here?) that was housing a lobster had to stay behind with what looked like a car roof rack that had new coral growth starting on it. Tomorrow I'll do the scuba diving portion of the trash pick up, that will be exercise. Swimming while hauling a bag of trash counts as exercise. Someday I'll get to run again. :sigh:

[Tate]

Dean---You are AMAZINGLY SPEEEEEEDY!!!!

[debbiedo]

Dean, I want to run like you when I grow up!!!

Tate, let me know if you are doing Baltimore. My husband is doing the half and I will be there to cheer. I should run the half too but October will probably be a recovery month for me. I need to take a break after Half marathon training June-September.

Hope to get to bed semi early tonight. Race starts at 0800. We need to take our second car to the finish so we don't have take the metro back. It is a point to point. It is net down hill. It is a fast course. I am hoping to PR but in the end I will do the best I can do and that is all I can do!

[mrgarak]

Trio of Lovely Ladies - Suzanne, Tate & Deb - Thank you for the compliments.

I was actually blown away when I read the race results on Compuscore. My stats were better than I thought. It turns out I placed third (out of 34) in my age group (M40-44). I left before the awards ceremony, so I should be watching my mail in the coming week. I was 44 out of 492 entrants. There were some walkers, but well over 400 runners. My gender place was 39/238.

Deb - Good luck tomorrow. I'll be rooting for you.

Dean

[debbiedo]

Race Day. Not sure what to eat because tummy nervous. I am dressed in shorts and sleeveless matching coolmax type shirt. It is around 57 degrees out and once the sun comes out it may be closer to 60 which is pretty perfect and the rain stopped over night. It was pouring and there was thunder keeping me awake for a while. Slept on and off but feel rested and woke up before 5am and stayed awake. Think I will have a banana and that is it. Better go take Ibuprofen and Immodium and have a big drink though.

It is a wave start. I will be in 3rd corral. I want to run light and relaxed and will be playing the passing game once I am at 4 miles. I may be running with a few friends from pace group but who knows. Sometimes that works and sometimes they go way too fast for me. It worked great for me last year and then I sped up the last half mile and left my friend behind. She wasn't too far back really. I want to run strong at the finish. It is downhill!!!! We never have downhill finishes.

Race report much later!!

[debbiedo]

The weather was a bit grey and the temps were a damp 55 or so before the race but I quickly warmed up running. I started in the last wave because it really didn't matter with the chip. I ran with a women from my pace group and we stayed together till the we sprinted to the finish. I am not sure if she was right with me or if I ended up a bit ahead but not by much. I think she could have gone faster but she stayed with me the whole race and she made it look easy.

This course is down the Rockville Pike. They close down 2 lanes of the north bound side. There is no through traffic during the race so no cars to contend with ever. The course starts close to one Metro stop and ends 6.2 miles down the road at a big mall and by the metro there so people can get back to their cars. It is net down hill but there are some hills. They aren't particularly big hills and I only remember one that seemed to go on and on for a while. The whole course was rather crowded because there were over 3300 runners there. The first mile I told Mary that we should stay left and get up on the side walk if needed to pass which we did. I didn't think we were going fast the first mile. It didn't feel hard butttttt we did a 8:45 mile and it was our fastest but not by much.

Here are my Garmin splits. Of course my Garmin added on .05 miles to the total for 6.25 miles instead of 6.2 miles.

Mile 1 8:45
Mile 2 8:48
Mile 3 8:53( yes I was starting to feel it)
Mile 4 8:49
Mile 5 9:03( bigger hill and water stop and fatigue setting in)
Mile 6 8:49
last .25 miles on Garmin 1.47

My finish time on Garmin 54.56. I wanted to do between 55-56 minutes so I made my goal and beat last years time at this point( need official time) by 31 seconds I think. Last year I ran it in 55.27 official chip time. I am totally happy to PR and with all the back issues to go a bit faster. I was hoping to finish somewhere close to last year but never thought I would beat the time. Wish Mile 5 didn't slow down but it was still a good pace. I was aiming for around a 9 minute over all pace and I surpassed that a bit.

I was dressed appropriately. I was freezing eventually because the temp was a damp 60 maybe when it was over. I luckily sent sweats through the bag check.

I feel find now. I don't even feel stiff. I am tired because I slept so so. So I guess there is a well earned nap in my future!

[debbiedo]

Temp 52 now so I guess it was a little colder at the finish then I thought. It was 56 when we left the house this morning. The sun has never come out. It is really damp today. No wonder I got so cold once I cooled off.

[debbiedo]

MapMyRun.com - Map your Running Routes. Find Runs. Calculate Calories, Pedometer, Distance, and More.

not sure if this will come out but it should have course map and elevation profile.

Thinking of Tate running her Half!!!! and Bill out there doing Big Sur Marathon. My friends 3 daughter doing the marathon too.

[debbiedo]

well that link didn't work oh well. It was a great race. I look forward to it next year.

I guess I am totally back !!!

[mrgarak]

Deb - Excellent job in your 10K beating your intended goal and last year's time to boot! You are totally back and rockin!!

Dean

[mrgarak]

Today I ran 47 minutes around town and in the trails. I stopped once and walked to answer a text from a friend. I usually don't carry my cell phone while running, but was expecting an important call. The call never came, but it was great to hear from one of my running friends. Overall I felt good and not too sore from yesterday. The weather was similar to what Deb described in her race.

Time for me to head to work. I'll check back later.

Dean

[debbiedo]

Thanks Dean. Can't wait to hear how Tate and Bill did.

I didn't realize you worked on Sundays as I usually do Dean.

[Tate]

Deb----What an amazing race and congrats on the PR!!!! Well done!! You have really conquered a lot and your comeback has been a real inspiration to me.

YOU ROCK!!!!!

[Tate]

It was chilly and cloudy this morning (50 degrees) with little wind----perfect running weather. I wore compression shorts, a short sleeve tech shirt and a vest and gloves and it was just right.

At the start of the race, I decided I would run 4 mins and walk one just like I had done in my training runs. At about Mile 2, I was chatting with a very friendly woman about my strategy and she asked if she could tag along (Lois is her name). I agreed (of course) and we chatted and encouraged each other for the rest of the race. In light of recent events, I was feeling kind of fragile today and did not want to do this alone----God is good---He gave me a buddy so I did not have to---VERY cool. On top of that, Lois is in the mental health field and we share a lot in terms of what we survived in our families of origin----we have both worked through our own process and were able to talk about things like strength and resilience as we trotted along.

The hills started at about Mile 7 and kept on coming til 12---this is NOT an easy course!! My legs are sore, but I feel very good about my effort. I pushed hard, but not to exhaustion and I am ok with that. My time was a full 13 minutes slower than last year and I really do not care---I am just grateful to have gotten through it at all. 2:30:29 was my time on my Garmin. Lois lives in NJ, and we exchanged contact info---I am hoping we will get to run together again soon.

Forgot to add my splits (they were pretty dang consistent):

Mile 1 11:41
Mile 2 11:13
MIle 3 11:10
MIle 4 11:26
Mile 5 11:11
Mile 6 11:14
Mile 7 11:29
Mile 8 11:32
Mile 9 11:37
Mile 10 11:24
Mile 11 11:54
Mile 12 11:23
Mile 13: 11:21

BTW, I am verrrrry seriously considering registering for the Baltimore marathon (October 9th) this week.

[debbiedo]

Yeah, I will get to see you if you come to Baltimore. Don is doing half marathon. I am not.

Tate, I think you ran a great race!!!

I am still waiting for official race results.

[debbiedo]

I just found the race results on Washington Ruuning Report. My time was 54:55. That is a 32 second PR for me and my overall pace was 8:51 per mile. I was told to expect 15-20 seconds faster then Cherry Blossom but I did better then that. I am so happy to be back stronger then ever. Now all I need to do is watch how much I am running and not get back into big time pain. I made this improvement with the run less plan. I only run 4 days a week and try to cross train with stair machine once a week and I have been lifting weights again 2-3 times a week and then of course there is my 2x a week Pilates but I was doing that all along.

[mrgarak]

Tate - You did super today!: I think you will do great in Baltimore. Who knows, I might even go there myself this fall. Maybe

Deb - I usually work Sundays every third month, but cover one or two here and there. Today is a covering day for someone on a trip. Next month, it is my turn to work Sundays, but I will be off May 18th for my next race - The Stillwater Stampede!

[westside]

Big Sur International Marathon

This is a tough one but the scenery is spectacular and PR's are hard to come by unless you happen to be in the period where PR's are coming easy. The race started near sea level and ended near sea level but I never saw nothing level while running. Lot's of hills, up and down.

There were around 3,000 marathoners and the race started at 6:45. I had to get on a bus at 4:30, a luxury bus at that. Not that bad really, got a decent nights sleep. We got down to Big Sur and the temps were noticably warm for that early in the morning. I had crampy legs for the first two miles and I was kind of suspicious as to how this day was going to play out. Things got better by mile 4 or so. I was cruising okay and ran into a couple of ultra runners who were out there that day and also ran about 5 minutes with Dean Karnazes and we chatted a little.

My plan was to do the first half in around 1:55 and see what happens after that. At mile 10 we come to a big hill at Hurricane Point. You see the hill from a mile away. It climbs around 550 feet over 2 miles. I did a little walking on the hill but at mile 12, the summit we picked up some downhill speed and hit the halfway point at 1:56:xx.

The hills kept on coming in the second half although not as bad as Hurricane Hill. I thought I might have been able to get a negative split but it didn''t happen. I finished in 3:57:12 and felt good about the run. I was 16 out of maybe 90 in my age group, 660 out of 3,000, but I didn't stick around for the final results.

I would consider this a great destination marathon as many here were from around the country and out of the country. It's not easy, expect a few more minutes but the scenery is worth it.

[Tate]

Wow, Bill---you got to run with Dean???!!!! You always get to hob-knob with running celebs---too cool!!! Sounds like you ran really well---Great job!!!!