(Warning: probably moving to 60-is-the-new-40.blogspot.com shortly..I will link to it from this blog)
I haven't been posting much, lots of work and travel stuff going on and well, not much to say about running these days.
My mileage for this year has been low for me, but I'm intending to return to normal levels in 2016.
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| Ready for the start |
I have run a lot of 'easy' marathons (ie. slow) since Oct 2014 (Chicago). I have found that with not much training I can clock a 4:45...
I signed up for Quarry Lakes because the timing worked out well w.r.t holiday travel coming up...and it is dead flat. It's also close to home and cheap. A nasty cold that seemed to hit everybody at work and home took out a few weeks of training and my training was already spotty.
This is not a super scenic course but it's pleasant and has great bike paths and crushed gravel surfaces that are easy on the legs. It runs along a river for most of the way but the river is not very full of water these days so there's mostly brush and grasses on the banks.
Like most full trail marathons it's two loops of the half marathon course.
The good thing about this course is that you get to see people a bit more than a one-way non-out-and-back course. It also doesn't have a lot of corners so the tangents run themselves 8) (I ran exactly 26.2 on the garmin, which is pretty rare.)
The forecast was for cloudy and chance of rain during the second loop, but luckily the rain held off.
I started the race targeting a 10:30 pace, hoping to do a bit under 4:45 but thinking that might be a big mistake. At about mile 7 I meet up with a very nice fellow Andrew Poon and what with talking with him we slowed down a bit. I didn't mind this as I've learned the the first half of a marathon should just be run what feels like crazy slow when undertrained.
We had a very nice chat about running...he had also discovered running later in life and I found out he was a 6 grade teacher in the local area for 25 years...talk about tough!
Andrew ran the half, and so after that I dropped the hammer a teeny bit and sped up to 10:00 pace..which was a big mistake as when I got to mile 22 the course turned from downwind to upwind and BAM...ouch..made a huge difference. I had my jacket spun up and tied around my waste for most of the race but when I hit that wind and slowed down my solar plexus started feeling really cold after a bit and the jacket was nice to have.
Ended up walk-running to the finish so I would have been better served holding to the same paces as the first half..probably would have saved 4 min or so. But pretty good considering.
First RED finishing shirt I have gotten. Nice!
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| Finished! (2nd place medal too.) |
4:41:47 finishing time
27 / 54 overall
2 / 3 in 60-69 age group
| 2015-12-20 Sun | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Split | Miles | Pace | ||
| 1 | 1.00 | 10:25 | ||
| 2 | 1.00 | 10:26 | ||
| 3 | 1.00 | 10:24 | ||
| 4 | 1.00 | 10:01 | ||
| 5 | 1.00 | 10:22 | ||
| 6 | 1.00 | 10:25 | ||
| 7 | 1.00 | 10:31 | ||
| 8 | 1.00 | 11:09 | ||
| 9 | 1.00 | 10:48 | ||
| 10 | 1.00 | 10:48 | ||
| 11 | 1.00 | 10:42 | ||
| 12 | 1.00 | 10:32 | ||
| 13 | 1.00 | 10:43 | ||
| 14 | 1.00 | 10:44 | ||
| 15 | 1.00 | 10:30 | ||
| 16 | 1.00 | 10:33 | ||
| 17 | 1.00 | 10:03 | ||
| 18 | 1.00 | 9:59 | ||
| 19 | 1.00 | 9:32 | ||
| 20 | 1.00 | 10:05 | ||
| 21 | 1.00 | 10:18 | ||
| 22 | 0.40 | 11:31 | ||
| 23 | 1.00 | 11:32 | ||
| 24 | 1.00 | 11:55 | ||
| 25 | 1.00 | 12:32 | ||
| 26 | 1.00 | 12:36 | ||
| 27 | 0.75 | 12:13 | ||
| Sum | 26.2 | 10:46 | ||
Nice post and congratulations! I love the 60-is-the-new-40 concept.
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