Frostbite Half Marathon (Read 1084 times)

Thanks! I upload a lot of my GPS to motionbased. Given all the chatter about this race, I thought it might be interesting to share. Wind was supposed to be 15 mph, so this was a relief!

That was my big kick downhill, trying (failing) to catch Gorilla boy as he too was sprinting. But I did pass Roger, somebody who has forever been a league ahead of me. No more.

Dude. I swore I was never gonna get a Garmin. I'm, like, a purist, or something. But that is just ... Sooooooooooooo Coooooool. I. Must. Have. It.

Dude. I wish I'd had one of these gizmo's when I was training for marathons and I am soooo looking forward to using it for my next marathon in ~October. Doing big workouts on the roads is just so simple. Yesterday, just to see how it would go, I did 5 x 1 mile with 3 minute recovery jogs. It was unbelievable. I've always tried to do these types of workouts on the roads versus the track or a measured loop just because it is less monotonous and I think it is better training for the environment you're going to race in--hills, wind etc. But it's always been tricky to know how far or fast I was actually running. I wound up doing most of my workouts by time, such as 6 x 5 minutes etc. With the Garmin, I entered in an advanced workout: Lap 1: run until I hit the lap button (warmup), Lap 2: run 1 mile, Lap 3: run 3 minutes, (recovery) Lap 4: run 1 mile, Lap 5: run 3 minutes, (recovery) Lap 6: run 1 mile, Lap 7: run 3 minutes, (recovery) Lap 8: run 1 mile, Lap 9: run 3 minutes, (recovery) Lap 10: run 1 mile, Lap 11: run until I hit the stop button (cooldown.) So I went out running. After about 38 minutes (when I was finally on a stretch of road where I wouldn't have to cross any significant patches of ice and snow) I hit the lap button. From there the Garmin told me what to do. It was fantastic. My mind is racing with all kinds of workouts I can create with the thing. I can't wait to do marathon workouts such as 18 miles with MP reps of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 miles with 2 minute recoveries, etc. It makes me almost want to abandon the plan and run a spring marathon. I'm having a hard time not listening to the little devil on my shoulder whispering in my ear (stay on target, stay on target...) Bottom line, get one. Modifide to add: Check it. Note that I got in barely any cooldown due to a hard deadline to get home (my daughter had a Dr. appointment--sick visit no less.)

No. The elevation profiler on GPS tends to overestimate the actual elevation change.

Seems like tuning that with MotionBase gravity web service works pretty well. When I do that I get the same elevation gain as I get with gmaps etc.

Looking at other folks' GPS data for the Frostbite half marathon I see that most get about +/- 1700 feet. Not quite sure why mine got +/- 3200.

The GPS units are set, I believe, to be "smart" about how often they track data. That means that the faster you move, the more frequently they take points. So for most running, it is about once every 3-5 seconds. For Gorilla Man, it is once every 15 seconds. For Jeff it is once a second. You can reset it to record once per second, but that generally creates a huge amount of data that slogs down MB. I forget how to change this setting, but it is somewhere in the training options I believe. Yes, the truth is in the middle. Interestingly, if you have gravity service turned on, bridges go away, so that if you run over a bridge, the elevation profile makes it look instead like you ran down to the river, went for a swim and then ran back up to the road. This too adds elevation. If you do not use gravity service, you get a lot of noise from arm swing, which adds a lot of false elevation change. None of it is perfect. Yet. Total loss and gain over a run is only part of the picture. It is also nice to have an idea of the road grade (which you get on MB but not yet on RA) and the number of climbs/descents. Pikes Peak marathon, for example is brutal not just for its >9000 foot climb, but for the fact that it is done almost as a single relentless climb and that it includes grades of up to 25% with an average 12%. While the Monkey Marathon has over a third the climb with the same peak grade, the average climb grade is far less and the climbing is broken up over 7-9 distinct climbs (depending on how you count), so it is a much much faster race (although it is far from fast, right Jeff? :roll

It is official. Sheesh. 10 -Gorilla Man's Real Name- 37 1 45 22 Nashville, TN 11 S. Trent Rosenbloom 37 1 46 11 Nashville, TN

Hey, where have they posted results? Can't find 'em on the website or on the Striders site yet. And who added 17 seconds to the time? Bastards.

Did we run the same elevation change as the Monkey, in half the distance? No wonder my legs feel like someone beat them with a baseball bat.

I fixed the elevation on this. Now it reads like it should: +1,379 / -1,460