2024 Advanced Training and Racing Thread (still competitive jerks) (Read 282 times)

 

It's a nice summer holiday as long as you don't turn on the news and see the permanently oppressed victims making a complete spectacle of themselves (there you go Mikkey there's something more readable than talking about actual running )

 

Edit: I guess I should mention that it commemorates the day the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 between Maori tribes and the crown, creating the great country we have now that many are intent on destroying.

My preferred solution is "go to the beach".

12 pages behind, wow!! I've got a lot of catching up to do.

After the recent hostile thread takeover, I did what any deposed dictator would do - fled the country. Actually, I had a travel work conference (great to see you again, DWave!), catch up work from that, out-of-state soccer tournament w/ DD1, then the out-of-country vacation with DW, more catch up, and now I've somehow got a bit of breathing room despite 1/3 of my department being gone and me having extra work.

Running wise, things are going just fine. Continuing to build back and I'm now getting to some 5k effort intervals along with the HM effort intervals I've been doing for a good while. Still lifting, which is good on the one hand for general strength purposes (I haven't noticed any effects upon running) and a bit bad on the other because I'll have to replace all my favorite running singlets as those seem to have shrunk.

More comments as to the community once I can see what everyone has been up to.

Haters will say this is a conspiracy theory, but I cannot be the only one who noticed this.

First, Mikkey and Calbears disappear without a trace for over a month. Then Darkwave shows up (Remember she works for a government *agency* wink wink), says she's out of shape and swears that she didn't kidnap CommanderKeen 👀. Then a few days later, Commander Keen shows up after a month of absence and says he "was out of the country on vacation with his wife".

Here's what I think happened: Mikkey, Calbears and Keen got abducted for questioning to an undisclosed CIA black site.

First they tried regular ways of interrogation, namely waterboarding, a baseball bat, electric shock, and blasting their ears 24h non stop with Selena Gomez songs.

They then realized these are very highly trained assets and they needed to up their game.

In comes Darkwave and she starts whispering ambiguous parts of the law to them. They immediately break and let out all the secrets.

They're let out and now are double agents.

 Love it, this is really good. Especially the Selena Gomez songs part. Welcome back Commander.

Haters will say this is a conspiracy theory, but I cannot be the only one who noticed this.

First, Mikkey and Calbears disappear without a trace for over a month. Then Darkwave shows up (Remember she works for a government *agency* wink wink), says she's out of shape and swears that she didn't kidnap CommanderKeen 👀. Then a few days later, Commander Keen shows up after a month of absence and says he "was out of the country on vacation with his wife".

Here's what I think happened: Mikkey, Calbears and Keen got abducted for questioning to an undisclosed CIA black site.

First they tried regular ways of interrogation, namely waterboarding, a baseball bat, electric shock, and blasting their ears 24h non stop with Selena Gomez songs.

They then realized these are very highly trained assets and they needed to up their game.

In comes Darkwave and she starts whispering ambiguous parts of the law to them. They immediately break and let out all the secrets.

They're let out and now are double agents.

That sounds a lot more reasonable than some of the theories surrounding US politics.

Me - Coatesville HM was this morning, recap below.  Overall a pretty pleasing day out in the circumstances.  Coach tried a different race week setup, with 3 days off (which I did for Omaha HM), one of which was the day before the race (this was entirely new).  I felt a little off for the race - not bad, just a bit... meh and my HR was a little on the high side.  I don't think that was anything to do with the race week strategy though as I'd had a similar feeling during Friday's run.  Despite that, I still managed 3rd overall and a course PB, by 18 seconds over my time from 6 years ago that was prior to supershoes, but which did have significantly cooler conditions as back then the race was a month later.

Weekly for period: From: 05/02/2024 To 11/02/2024

Totals: Time: 03:41:17 - 🦅Imperial: 33.77 mi - Metric: 54.34 km

Coatesville Half Marathon 2024, race recap

"Run to the Hills!" used to be the (entirely appropriate) slogan for Coatesville HM, one of the hiller HM courses around New Zealand, with around 300m (1000ft) of elevation gain.  I listened to it in the car on the way there.  Thankfully Saturday's humidity dissipated overnight and was replaced with a cooler southerly shift (albeit this did make largely for a headwind on the way out / tailwind back).  For the most part race temps were around the 16-18C mark (60s F) which is pretty good for this time of year, although the sun did warm things up quickly.

I noticed during the warm up that my HR was a little high, similar to Friday's final run before the race.  I didn't feel totally 100%... not bad, just a bit "meh".  Anyways I don't read anything into it as I have magically come right on the start line more than once (including at this very race).  Caught up with a few runners I hadn't seen in a while before the start too.  I have two goals for the race:

1. Run a course PB (my time from 2018 was 1:17:42... crazy to think it was a PB at the time and on this of all courses!).

2. Eat into my rival Ben's lead in the half marathon series (his lead of ~1:20 was down to 1:19 or so after Omaha, so a bit of work to do).

My strategy was pretty much just to try and keep the effort steady.  Work the downhills and just keep it nice and steady on the uphills.  Most of the climbs in this race are the long, steady type where you can dial in the rhythm and grind it out.  I've run a lot of hills since the last race in early December so I'm feeling fairly well prepared.  Pacing is important, and difficult, here - the last 2km are all downhill but there's a lot of climbing between halfway and the 19km mark - you actually want to empty the tank a little earlier than you normally would for a half, but overdo it too early and you'll pay on one of the climbs.  There's not a lot of margin for error.

At the start, there is one younger guy with me.  I don't see any of the series runners just yet, quite a contrast to Omaha where the top 4 series runners were in a pack for two-thirds of the race.  I briefly chat to him and then he dropped me at the first hill around 2km in.  This is a steeper climb which then levels off towards the top where you turn a corner and the hill keeps going for longer than you expect.  After that there's undulations along the ridge.  Another younger guy passes me just after the corner, and then passes the first guy.  He ended up going close to the course record too.

I haven't seen my series rival, Ben, yet and was half wondering if he wasn't even here.  However, he caught up to me along the ridge around 4km in.  At this point, I noticed myself feeling a bit off, and I was in one of those "how the hell am I gonna hold this effort for another 17km" holes.  Seriously, I did not really feel great at any point during this race, like I had to battle harder than I'd have liked from very early on.  But I told myself to suck it up and stick to the plan, and then dropped him shortly after on a downhill.  I've noticed he's not great at those and I'd figured if I was running with him the whole way I could drop him on the big downhill at the end.

There's around 5km along the ridge which is undulating, and has great views out across a couple of my favourite running areas - Whenuapai to the south east, and Riverhead Forest to the west.  I was spending far too much time muttering to myself in my head to properly enjoy them though.  Then, a relatively long downhill, which is fun but slightly depressing because there's a turnaround at the bottom and you have to climb the whole way back up.  At the turnaround point, I notice I have probably 20-30 seconds over Ben and a couple of other runners.  First and second are well ahead by now.  I try to never look backwards in races to clock the next runner because I find it massively encouraging when someone does that to me as it suggests they're tiring.  Also there's 3 u-turns in this race where you can check out the competition without encouraging them.

Coming up the hill, I know it's roughly 2km uphill, 2km flat/down, then 3km uphill before a rolling section and the big downhill.  But it's that first hill where people tend to get found out.  I settled into a nice rhythm coming up this one, and the cheers from other runners coming down the hill really helped too.  I survived that one fine, and as far as I can tell, no-one is gaining on me.  Just gotta keep it consistent over the next section before the next climb, and I remember how I've always enjoyed this section with nice tall trees on either side of the road (and an aid station).

Around the 13.5km mark, there's a random side-road diversion which goes downhill into a u-turn, before the longer climb starts.  At the turnaround, I notice the chasing group has split and Ben is slightly ahead of them, but doesn't seem to be gaining at all on me.  Time to go to work again... if I can survive the next 5km, I know I can cash in on the downhill to eat into his series lead.  And I'm also motivated by gunning for 3rd place.  I got 2nd here a couple times, but I'm getting older now and every podium is special.  This is very different to the last race where there was a lot of tactical pack running... this time it's me, by myself, just trying to execute my plan.

Then I saw Will, who yelled at me to stop screwing around and run faster.  He's a good guy and I appreciated that.  At this point, in hindsight, the early race feeling of being a "bit off" had actually been replaced by "my legs are getting a bit tired".  And it was just about putting the work in. So I did.  Just tried to keep the legs turning over up the hills, and not back off too much during the occasional reprieve on the flat.  The left turn onto Glenmore Road at the 17km mark basically signals the end of the big climbs with only a few more undulations between me and the downhill.

The last of the random u-turns is off a diversion down Donaldson Drive (this one in particular always seems to remind me of the course certification).  Ben's definitely not gaining, and I just have to hang in there for another km.  So I did.

A few more rollers, then we're at the top and there's those views of Riverhead Forest that signal the final downhill.  This one starts steeper and flattens out towards the bottom, so you have to work the quads harder at the top.  The legs are definitely battling to try and keep the cadence up but I hung in there.  Every second might count towards the series results if I'm gonna have any chance of catching first place.  And it looks like I might be on for a course PB after all too.  The last 500m are on a limestone trail through the pony club, so this is a little tougher, especially as there's a bunch of turns just before the finish line.  Put in a little extra effort towards the line and it is a course PB! (1:17:24 official).

Awesome to see the family at the finish and my daughter even got to give me the finisher medal which was cool!  Better yet, Ben doesn't show up for another 43 seconds so I've taken a big chunk out of that series lead.  Still some work to do at Maraetai and Waterfront, but after the last couple of races I'm feeling like that's achievable.  And then my daughter ran a PB in her 2km kids race as well, so a good day all around.

Watson kindly commented on Strava that he thought this was my best race for some time.  I think he might be right, at least for the last couple of years.  While not my fastest race in that time, this is a tough course, and I had to battle for much longer than I would ordinarily expect in a half as I didn't feel totally on my game.  It was almost exactly same pace as Omaha in December, which is almost dead flat and had probably better weather (albeit there is a real mix of terrain there).  When I thought about it, this might actually be the best I have raced since March 2022, and I'm optimistic for the last two series races.

....

Steve/Flavio Solid weeks. Lots of volume.

Commander Thanks for the vote of confidence. We still have to race each other in an ultra someday.

Mark Very exciting stuff. Glad you took a chunk from the lead. Looking forward to more chunks being taken. You remarked that the strategy for that course is to empty the tank earlier than usual. Is this because you can use the last 2k of down hill to hang on to the pace?

My Week

Totals: Time: 08:29:48 - 🦅Imperial: 65.12 mi - Metric: 104.77 km

Short Race Report:

The weather was overcast and something like 48 degrees F / 9 degrees C. The course was pancake flat, and a double out and back. First few hundred meters I was stride for stride with another guy sharing lead. I did my usual thing of matching at the shoulder, then pulling ahead ever so slightly to test the reaction, then dialing the pace back again. After 3 or 4 reps of this I pulled ahead by a good margin.

Everything felt about the same in the first half. Aerobically I felt slightly better than I did on my tempo run Wednesday (which is ... weird?). As I got to the turnaround at the half way point, the clock was at about 17:58 and I thought to myself that was the easiest sub 18 5k I have ever run. Sometime after mile 4 I started breathing harder, but I didn't feel awful yet. Not too much later a group running their cooldown is running in the opposite direction, which included darkwave who gave me a shout. 

Mile 5 was my slowest at 5:49. Last mile was tough aerobically but my legs were fine. Picked it up for a small kick to finish in 35:56 official time, 1st OA. Then met and chatted with darkwave afterwards. It was nice meeting you darkwave, hopefully in the near future we will end up in the same race again. Maybe one of your clubs track races.