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Race Report: Sunburst Races Marathon

June 5, 2010 3 comments

Well that was humid.  But oh so awesome.  I didn’t do great, but I had a great time, am very happy with my performance, and am glad I signed up.  Had a great time, though I still have no idea why it’s called the Sunburst Races.  Let’s start with the race itself.

The Race

First off, a call to all you speedy people out there who can run much faster than me: if you can consistently do a sub-3 hour marathon, you can potentially win this race.  If you’re a woman, you almost certainly can.  They don’t have huge prize purses, but how awesome would it be when that smug git in your office asks if you won the marathon this weekend and you can dryly reply “Yes.”?  This year was probably a bit slower than typical due to the humidity (94%!), but the top three men were 2:48:45, 2:50:33, and 2:54:21 with the women at 3:04:58, 3:12:45, and 3:15:48.

If you missed yesterday’s pre-race post, the Sunburst Races are six races in one (or seven if you count the Friday night Family Fun Walk (“about” 2 miles).  The Marathon, Half Marathon, Wheelchair Half Marathon, 5k, 5k Walk, and 10k each have their own starting gun, spread out across three hours, and all run from the College Football Hall of Fame to Notre Dame Stadium.  If you know me, or even have a vague knowledge of me, you know I’m certainly not a huge sports fan, and certainly don’t follow college sports, but I’ve got to say that a finish line on the 50 yard line of what I believe is the largest1 college football stadium in America is pretty frickin’ cool.  As for finish line experiences, I’d say it’s my second favorite, just behind Hayward Field in Eugene.

But the finish line is no place to start a race report.  Let’s start at the start line, right?

As much as I was wary of the spread out start times, it did make for wicked easy corralling.  There was literally nobody lined up when we got there.  The Hall of Fame has a large astroturf “field” (about 30 yards, maybe) in front of the building, which was used for back check, last minute bib pickup, and general lounging about to hydrate and/or stretch.  Just 20 yards away was the start line, which, fortunately, the wheelchair guys knew which way to line up in front of, so they could set a good example for the rest of us.  There were only 744 marathoners (well, finishers at least), so it was a quick and easy line up.  Sunburst doesn’t have pace groups, but they had volunteers with full minute pace increments march out in to the field to get people lined up in the appropriate order.  Which was awesome genius.  Even if nobody lined up with the lonely five minute mile guy.

We started nice and promptly at six, after a trumpet solo Star Spangled Banner by a local college freshman2.  No jockeying for position, no people getting trampled or run off the course, just a clean, smooth start with fans all around.  The course starts southbound for three blocks before a quick turnaround to head north two blocks parallel, where many spectators had shimmied over to in order to catch another pass.  The first marathon I ever did (Austin 2007) started the same way and I think it’s a great practice that all course planners should consider.

It must be humid during this race on a regular basis, because it quickly became clear why they have water and Gatorade every two miles along the course.  Tons of awesome volunteers staffed each water station, all very enthusiastic and encouraging, no matter how miserable we looked in the squishy air.  They also had four Red Cross first responders at each station in addition to the full medical tent at the finish line.  All in all, they definitely had good organization on the water stops.  The one down side, which didn’t affect the 744 of us all spread out, was that they weren’t the quickest drink preppers; when the larger Half Marathon crowds came through, there was some struggling to keep up with demand.  I learned post-race that a few stations also unfortunately ran out of not only Gatorade, but water as well, by the time the slower runners came through on the Half.

My favorite volunteers were of course the two teenage boys – maybe 14ish – on one of the corners near mile 11 (which was later mile 24.75ish) who were put in charge of Big Cardboard Arrow Holding, one of the most crucial jobs at this complex corner.  They were clearly told by someone – perhaps a parent or volunteer team leader; maybe one and the same – to say “encouraging things” to runners as they came by.  Almost all the volunteers were doing this, when they weren’t shouting “Gatorade!  Gator here!” and “Water!  Gotcher water!”, because they’re awesome.  But the timeless angst of 14 year olds everywhere made it so much more enjoyable.  Their words said “looking good keep going you can do it keep it strong go runners looking good”3 but their tones of voice and eyes said “why am I here why are you here what’s wrong with you people I hate this can I go home god my mom’s a slavedriver.”  I don’t think they realized quite how they were managing to bring a smile to so many faces.

Have you been paying attention?  Did you catch how I mentioned that all the races start and end at the same place?  Been wondering how that works?  (Why didn’t you just check out the maps?  M H 10 5)  The 5k goes pretty much straight from start to finish through downtown.  The 10k takes a little detour.  The half takes a larger detour, heading out to the middle of nowhere and then coming back in.  The marathon heads up along the river to a park way off in the northwest, then back through town (across the 5k mob – eek!) and then out and back along a riverfront path to the east of downtown before heading back up to the stadium.  It was a really nice running environment instead of just roads, even if we did collide with the 5k walkers for most of the last mile and a half (which is half the race for them!).

Coming in to Notre Dame stadium was pretty much awesome.  It was a bit of a drag seeing it, thinking you’re heading in, and then having to pass most of it to get to the entry tunnel on to the field, but it was oh so worth it.  There’s no mile 26 sign, but you see the half marathon mile 13 sign right before you turn in to the tunnel, which is all downhill from the road to the field, so everyone (except the walkers, obviously) just opened it up and finished strong.  Notre Dame has some rules to protect the turf – specifically, once you leave you can’t come back in and no spectators allowed – but there was plenty of food and drink to recover with and tons of room to stretch.  No bathrooms on the field, obviously, which is how they keep you from just hanging out all day (though my wife managed to hold on long enough to greet me at the finish).

All in all, a very well run race which was a lot of fun.  Even if you’re not within range of a winning time, I’d still recommend it.  Especially if you’re a big football geek.  That’s one impressive stadium.

The Keath

I had three goal tiers for this race;

  1. Qualify for Boston.  A wicked stretch for me, since it would require me to PR by 20 minutes.
  2. Set a Personal Record.
  3. Be honest enough with myself to pull back early if it doesn’t look like 1 or 2 are possible, rather than stubbornly persisting in an unattainable goal and crashing and burning again.  I’m running Grandma’s Marathon in two weeks as my “backup” attempt, so the idea was not to burn out on this one and leave myself unable to try anything at Grandma’s.

I mentioned it was humid, right?

I think I'm the blur directly below the S

After realizing that nobody lined up with the five minute mile group and very few admitted to a six minute mile pace, the race director had us all shimmy forward to fill in the huge gap before the start line.  I thought I was still with the 7 minute mile people, but I apparently got a little ahead of them.  By a quarter mile I realized I was going way too fast and tried to pull back, dropping from one cluster of people and then hanging on to the next one to catch up with me in the hopes that they were going a steady pace at or near 7:15 miles.  It took me three miles to even out and I was feeling good up to that point.

I ran with a guy from Cincinnati for a while and we chatted for a bit about our goals and adjusting them for the heat.  I hadn’t realized it, but at that point I had already decided that goal 1 was not in the cards.  I figured I’d push half way at my goal pace and then pull back to 7:45 or so and shoot for a balance finish around my 3:29 PR.  He apologized a couple of times in case he was holding me back, but he certainly wasn’t.  By the 10k mark I realized that I needed to let him go ahead and not be stupid about holding the 7:15 pace too long.

Kryten, man, change of plan!

And then I went Zen.  I didn’t look at my watch from the 10k mark until maybe mile 15 or 16.  I didn’t worry about pace – I was just treating it as a long training run for Duluth.  I walked every aid station and took at least one cup of Gatorade and water.  I let the people running even 8:00 miles pass me.  I let the people running even 9:00 miles pass me.  I let the people running even 10:00 miles pass me.  It was that kind of day.  I mentioned it was humid, right?  94%?  Yeah.  My splits varied from 8:00 even to upwards of 11:00.

I caught up with (or maybe fell back to) a couple of women who were running together, but one of them hurt her hip and was really struggling.  We ran together for a while trying to encourage each other while her friend went on ahead.  When we got to the gun clock at mile 20 and saw it read 2:45, we were pretty encouraged.  I don’t know about her normal pace, but for me a half hour 10k would be rough but attainable, a 45 minute 10k was certainly feasible, and an hour 10k was nearly certain.  I would be incredibly happy with a 3:45, especially given my goal 3 approach for the majority of the race.  Less than a year ago my PR was 3:44, which I had to work really hard to attain, so in context “settling” for a 3:45 would be a huge improvement.

My run buddy eventually had to fall back a bit, and I actually ended up catching up with her friend in the last couple of miles.  3:45 was certainly in sight, and she had the same goal; she “had” to hit 3:45.  She was worrying about the lack of a 26 mile marker, but I pointed out the half marathon 13 marker and was hoping we all had the same finish line.  I did my daily good turn by being her personal cheerleader through to the finish.  Turns out that she must be somewhere between 35-39, because her goal was for a Boston qualifying time.  And we made it!  My chip time was 3:45:12 and her’s (she’s apparently named Thuy) was 3:45:11.  So maybe not my BQ goal, but someone hit their goal today, which is pretty awesome.  Congrats Thuy!

And I’m pretty darn proud of myself for not pushing too hard and just letting myself enjoy the race at a comfortable pace.  A time that was really tough for me a year ago is comfortable now.  And it was good enough for 17th in my age group, the 113th, and 140th overall.  I’ve no regrets and am quite happy with that.  It’s good to have goals that matter.

Tomorrow we drive to Duluth.  So long, Indiana.  G’night!

Show 3 footnotes

  1. They are the self-proclaimed “most renowned,” which has to count for something. ↩
  2. A performance repeated for each of the six race starts. ↩
  3. Yes, on an unpunctuated loop just like that. ↩

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Hall of Fame to Notre Dame

June 4, 2010 No comments

Tomorrow morning I’m running the Sunburst Marathon in South Bend, Indiana.  I’m up way too late for a 6 am start, so this will be short and sweet.  They’ve got six different events running tomorrow (in addition to the stroller-friendly family walk 5k tonight); the Marathon, a Half Marathon, a wheelchair Half, a 10k, a 5k, and a 5k walk.  All six events start at the College Football Hall of Fame, and finish at the fifty yard line of Notre Dame Stadium.

I’m a bit concerned about the fact that the six events are each starting at a different time, spread out across over three hours, yet all merging together for the last mile and a half.  Looks to me like the 5k walkers are going to have a whole lot of marathoners trying to jockey for space with them, not to mention what happens when the faster half marathoners catch up with the slower 5k runners or when the mid-pack marathoners merge with the slower 10kers.  What do you think?

  • 5:50 – Wheelchair Half Marathon Start
  • 6:00 – Marathon Start
  • 7:15 – 5k Start
  • 7:30 – Half Marathon Start
  • 7:45 – 10k Start
  • 9:00 – 5k Walk Start

I’m hoping that since they’ve done this before they know what they’re doing.  All the literature says for walkers to stay to the left, but we all know how well people follow instructions.  Maybe there will be enough volunteers to keep thing organized.  I’ll find out in the morning.

As for preparedness, I’m not holding my breath for a BQ, but I’ll try my best for a PR.  In the 5 weeks since Louisville that I was supposed to be pushing hard for a great improvement I managed to miss two long runs, get sick and screw up my speedwork, and overall just really doubt myself.  Someone needs a hug.

And now it’s almost 10:00 and I’m still typing.  SO STUPID.  To bed with me!  Race report tomorrow, or when I find a faster network to play with.

389 = Me! Shout "Hi Keath!" if you see me! (What's that it's resting on? That's a tire from our RV that blew up in the tech's face when he went to change it this afternoon. Story for another time!)

Good luck to every running God’s Country, Green River, Timberline, Casper, Deadwood-Mickelson, Lewis and Clark, Minneapolis, NipMuch Trail, San Juan Island, Steamboat Springs, Rock ‘n’ Roll San Diego, or anywhere else this weekend.  It’s a busy one!

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Where to Run in Louisville and Shepherdsville

May 29, 2010 No comments

This post was originally just going to be a “farewell to Louisville,” but then I remembered that one of the things I wanted to do with this blog was post pictures and routes of different runs around the country (and abroad) as I roam.  So I tossed my Blackberry in my pocket1 for today’s long run and grabbed some snapshots for you.  As anyone with a Blackberry can tell you, they suck as cameras.  I apologize in advance for the photo quality.

It feels like we’ve been in Louisville forever, but it’s been less than two months.  We were initially drawn in by the Derby Festival Marathon, cleverly promoted at the Philly Marathon Expo in November, and of course the desire to see the Derby itself at least once in our lives.  We’ve actually been staying in an RV park about twenty minutes south of Louisville in a town called Shepherdsville.  Shepherdsville is not known for much, but it’s the home to the Zappos outlet, where they sell their returns at outrageous discounts.  If you’ve ever been to Fort Knox, Shepherdsville is the “truck stop town” you probably passed through when you get off I-65.

Anyway, Shepherdsville is where I did most of my runs.  Western Kentucky is apparently not a big fan of sidewalks or shoulders on their roads, so I was pretty worried at first, but a search of mapmyrun.com yielded an “all sidewalk” run starting in a neighborhood nearby.  It got me about five miles of sidewalk (out and back) and helped me discover that once you get off the main drag, there’s so few cars on the road that the lack of shoulder isn’t really an issue.  Kentuckiana drivers don’t signal.  EVER.  But they are pretty good about yielding to pedestrians on back roads.

Louisville River Walk

About 20 minutes north of Shepherdsville is a little town people have actually heard of: Louisville, Kentucky.  Home of the Kentucky Derby, the self proclaimed Greatest RV Rally in North America, Muhammad Ali, Hunter S. Thompson, Sue Grafton, Colonel Sanders, and hip hop sensation Nacirema.  It’s a bit further than I typically like to have to drive for a run, but they do have some awesome trails.  They started with a “River Walk” paved multi-use trail along Waterfront Park smack in the middle of downtown along the Ohio River and expanded out in both directions from there.  It’s still in progress and slowly reaching out to connect with other trails south and east of town, as well as pedestrian access to a pair of bridges to build a loop in to Jeffersonville and Clarksville, Indiana.  (It actually already extends east of where the map currently ends, along River Road all the way out to a construction project just past the University of Louisville’s crew cabin is.)  This is a small part of the larger network of parks and trails in the Metro Loop Trail.

Unless you live or are staying at a hotel elsewhere, I think the easiest access is at what is currently the extreme eastern end.  There’s a large parking lot where the crew cabin is, which always has plenty of parking (presumably assuming you don’t show up during practice or when the team is loading up for an away game…).  The map marks other easy access points.  The whole thing is paved, and if you come upon a staircase, there’s also a ramp nearby.  A majority of it is only feet from the Ohio River (don’t fall in!) and usually not that busy except for little chunks around the Tumbleweed Restaurant and a water playground nearby.  Along most of the route your biggest danger is territorial marsh birds that like to divebomb potential threats to their nest.

One minor challenge you might encounter is train tracks that cross the trail in two places.  Not that you aren’t smart enough to avoid oncoming trains (you are, aren’t you?), but that said trains tend to park for a couple of days while they filled.  It may have been coincidence, but the time I ran it the cars were positioned so that the trail went through the gap between cars, allowing you to hop over or under the coupling with relative ease.  Might be less fun with a bike.

Around Shepherdsville

Normally, I just start and end my runs at the RV park we’re at.  I don’t like driving somewhere just to run.  But the RV park is on the outskirts of town where the speed limit ceases to be observed.  That plus the aforementioned lack of sidewalk yielded me surrendering to a commute down the road to where the sidewalk starts.  So, all these Shepherdsville routes start at the Bullit County Health Department on Lee’s Valley Road.  They have ample visitor parking so you’re not stealing space from a business’ customers, they’re right at the start of the sidewalk, and there’s a suburban neighborhood across the street from their office with a nearly perfect one mile loop should you want to tack one or two on to any of the distances I’ve suggested.

5.5 Miles – 10k

Aside from just hitting a quick out-and-back route (which is actually what I built all these routes off of), or a mile loop around the suburb near the health department, five and half miles is really the shortest loop that can be done from this start point.  You can easily do shorter loops from town by parking at the Kroger supermarket or another one of the large lots – there’s also a YMCA that would obviously work out well if you’re a member.  This route starts out like the two below will; head out on route 44, which is also 4th Street through “downtown” Shepherdsville.  You’ll cross over the highway and then descend in to town.

At the first light, the sidewalk vanishes from 44 for a couple of blocks (right in front of the McDonald’s . . . hmmm?)  Depending on how the light timing works out, I usually cruise across with traffic and jaywalk across so I’m facing traffic when there’s a break.  If I luck out with a red light, I’ll cross before the intersection.  Either way, this is one of the few spots in Kentucky with a shoulder, so it’s all good.  Just watch out for the McDonald’s traffic2.  Alternately, you can pad the distance by about a half mile (bringing the total up to just about a 10k) by turning right at
Keystone Crossroads and then a left at North Buckman (61).  Fun side effect; this makes your GPS route look kind of like a guitar.

Back on 44, when the sidewalk runs out there’s an entrance to Frank E Simon Memorial Park3.  Every time I did this run the gate was open, but I did notice once that it was still closed around 7am; I’m guessing there’s one guy on the County maintenance team that’s responsible for opening the park in the morning and if he’s out sick or running late, it stays closed.  The park parking lot eventually ends, but there’s a gravel continuation that hooks up to the back side of City Park, aka First Street Park.  It looks like they’re building a new football field back there, so life may change, but at the moment, it’s an easy straightaway and left turn to hook up with the south side of Shepherdsville.  There’s no sidewalk or shoulder at the beginning of Vine Street, but it’s a rarely used road.  The worst part of this run is resisting the urge to stop at Waffle House or Dairy Queen as you come back up to 44 for the return leg.

12ish Miles

A 12 mile loop can be done almost entirely on sidewalks; there’s just a little bit of road running required.  Head out on route 44, crossing over at the aforementioned McDonald’s when the sidewalk ends.  The sidewalk starts up again a few blocks later, ends again at the Frank Simon Park, but continues on the other side of the road.  It’s like someone at a planning meeting said “we should have a sidewalk on the main drag through town” but nobody really understood the purpose of sidewalks and the concept fo continuity.  It’s not like the residential area dwindles out and it’s all rural; there’s still houses on the side of the road, but these folks have to dart across traffic if they want to say, walk three blocks to the library.

I digress.  Route 44 intersects Raymond Road twice.  I usually turned at the first one (mostly because the first time I ran this loop I didn’t realize there were two intersections), but the second one can be used to add on about three and half miles. As soon as you turn off of 44, sidewalks are but a silly thing that City Folk use, but the roads are so rural that it’s not really an issue.  During “busy” times, there might be two vehicles going opposite directions at the same time, but that’s pretty rare.  And people are likely to just stop in the middle of the road and wait patiently until they can pass you.  Kind of weird, but pretty safe.  And beautiful rural views almost the whole way.  The photos I grabbed were really overcast, but on a typical morning run it’s awesome to see the sun rise over the farms and burn off the overnight mist.  Raymond Road dead-ends in a T with Chillicoop4 Road heading to the right while Raymond continues to the left.  Chillicoop crawls through the hills a bit, past the people you probably think of when someone says “Rural Kentucky” – yup, front yards full of several tractors that don’t run, used mattresses, and furniture; shelled out school buses with grass growing on it; stumps carved in the shape of woodland animals; the whole thing.

Conestoga Highway

You’ll shortly come back to civilization and sidewalk at Blue Lick Road, which cuts back to downtown.  You can cut things short here or continue up to Conestoga Highway, which is an awesome steep hill climb with a brief view of town before the descent past Lowe’s and the City Offices.  Why it’s called Conestoga Highway is a mystery to most.  It is certainly not a highway; I think there are maybe three addresses along the whole thing (there’s one distribution center opposite the City Offices).  It’s barely a mile long, so you’re not cruising across the state on this thing.  And there’s certainly nothing to do with Conestoga wagons going on.  But, the complete lack of traffic makes for a nice run and the hill is just the right length to do repeats on if you’re in the mood.  The best part; it’s two lanes and doesn’t need to be, so there’s plenty of elbow room.  Don’t be seduced by the sidewalk alongside Lowe’s; it’s only 100 feet long.

Returning to town, Conestoga Parkway quickly merges in to Keystone Crossings at the box store wasteland, where you regain sidewalk and return the way you came.

16.5+ Miles

The 16.5 mile loop heads out on route 44 like it’s siblings, crossing back and forth to stay on the sidewalk, and turning right at the first Raymond Road, and then right on Chillicoop as with the 12ish loop.    (To make this route 20+ miles, stay on 44 until the second intersection with Raymond; it will loop back around to catch up with Chillicoop.)  Hanging the left on Blue Lick yields a couple of tight turns where drivers can’t see you far off, so come up cautiously.  To cut this short, turn right instead of left on 1020; it’ll turn out at just about a half marathon distance.  A left on 1020 up to Brooks is a slow and steady elevation climb, but when you turn on to Brooks Hill Road there’s a Love’s truck stop – a good place for a pit stop and to refill water bottles, etc just past the half way point (depending on the total distance you’re doing).  Over the total distance, you’ll pass about 8 liquor stores and 12 churches.  Welcome to Kentucky.

Bernheim  Arboretum and Research Forest

Just a short ways south of Shepherdsville is Bernheim Forest.  It’s on the same exit as the Jim Beam distillery visitor center5 and local Boy Scout camp, so there’s really no reason not to visit.  They charge a modest entry fee on the weekends, but it’s totally free (during daylight hours) during the week.

They for some reasons have descriptions of their trails online, but no map.  You can pick maps up at most tourist flier kiosks in the area, plus there are usually some at the entrance.  The Millenium Trail is a 13 mile hiking loop that heads out in to the rarely used portions of the park and looks quite tempting, but I never attempted it due to their request that I register before heading out and my general laziness about doing so.  If you’ve run (or hiked) it, let me know what I missed out on, please!  All the other loops around the main grounds are interconnected, making it easy to mix and match distances to get a nice lap.  Additionally, the road that loops through the park has large sections that are closed off to cars on one side so the road is one way and cyclists and pedestrians have a nice wide paved lane.  (With the exception of the Hike-Bike Path, cyclists are restricted to paved trails6, of which there are few, so the road is nice if you’re planning on biking any significant distance around the park.)

Most of the trails are dirt, save for the Nevin Lake loop which is mostly a nice wide gravel path with three short foot bridges and a few paved bits around the main “learning pavilion.”  The trail is the favorite of walkers since it’s flat and right off one of the parking lots, but rarely gets crowded.  Just keep an eye out for fishermen off the trail when they whip back to cast out.  It’s about 1.3 miles for each lap around the lake.  The Nevin Lake trail connects up easily with the Sun-Shade trail, which is maybe another mile or so, and a trail across from the amphitheater which may or may not have a name – I think it might be an old campground loop, but I don’t think they allow camping there any more – that is a nice short hill for repeats or another half mile out and back to the main loop.

All the other short trails loop off the main road and provide a variety of scenery if you’re not the type (like me) who is perfectly content to run laps around a lake at sunrise until all the fog burns off and it’s officially morning.  If you’re lucky, you might even stumble upon a goose “performance” at the amphitheater where all the geese are hanging out on the stage and audience seating, facing each other as if a performance is going on.  It’s like something out of a children’s picture book.  Speaking of geese (no, really – don’t!), they are apparently not welcome on the learning center lawn; the current approach as goose-poop-prevention is a couple of cardboard cutouts of wolves at strategic locations around the lawn.  Them things look realistic when approached from the right angle.  Be aware.

Elsewhere

That’s all I got.  Isn’t this post long enough already?  Did you actually read the whole thing?  Is this even interesting if you aren’t going to Louisville or Shepherdsville next week?  I’m hoping that, eventually, if someone Googles Louisville running routes or, oddly, Shepherdsville, KY running routes, they’ll end up here.  And it will help.  I like to think that my rambling is more beneficial that piles of community generated content with no commentary at run.com or mapmyrun.com, etc.  Time will tell.  Now it is time to go run somewhere different for a change.  I’ve been doing the above routes for two months!

Show 6 footnotes

  1. Okay, technically it’s always there for long runs – just in case – but today I took it out of my pocket periodically. ↩
  2. No, seriously.  I make fun of Kentucky drivers and fast food customers a lot, but when the two are combined, watch the f*ck out!  This Mickey-D’s has a wide open entrance and exit off a fairly major road that’s rarely busy enough for people to look before turning.  And don’t assume people will only be exiting through the exit and entering through the entrance.  F’reals, people.  Watch out. ↩
  3. Which, to the best of my knowledge, has no relation whatsoever to Franklin Simon Productions in Philly… ↩
  4. How can you not love this road name? ↩
  5. Far more interesting than the visitor center, and also at the same exit, though significant farther afield, is the Heaven Hill distillery and Bourbon Heritage Center, which was the best of the tours we did, including history of the whole industry, not just their distillery, an awesome tour despite the fact that the actual distilling is off-site, and a tasting that compares their mid-shelf product with near-top-of-the-line stuff.  And it’s free, unlike certain other distilleries. ↩
  6. Well, they’re supposed to be.  Not all cyclists are the paragons of virtue that your cousin Tina is. ↩

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Olympic Geekery

May 21, 2010 1 comment

I have to admit it; I’m a huge Olympic Geek.  In general, I’m not a sports fan.  With the exception1 of the four years I lived in New Hampshire prior to hitting the road, I’ve never followed sports.  I’ve attended a minor league hockey or baseball game occasionally, and it’s fun to watch, but I pay no attention to the day to day happenings of pro sports, don’t know any players except the biggest names who bleed over in to my google news feed, and don’t have a team I’d consider “my team” (though, when forced, I’ll still side with the Sox, Revs, Pats, Celtics, Bruins etc).

When I started running, I had no clue about any elite runners.  The first I heard of “a name” was when Ryan Shay passed away during the 2007 Olympic Trials.  I was traveling a lot for work at the time, so I kept picking up Runners World at airport newsstands (since Tracks magazine disappeared from the world very quickly) and learned about elite runners.  Somewhere along the way I caught a showing of Spirit of the Marathon in Austin, TX and got a feel for the world of elites as they followed Daniel Njenga.   Since then, I’ve definitely taken up a more spectator role in running events, but it’s still not so much a “sports fan” mentality as a “here are the people that are really good at something I like to do – it impresses me to watch them  and I hope to learn a little something” mentality.

I still have no interest in watching sports on television, listening to a game on the radio, or even flipping through a newspaper to the sports page.  Until the Olympics come around.  Something about the Olympics is different.  I’ve been fascinated with the games for as long as I can remember.  I think part of it is the fact that instead of random groups of people hired to play together, they are all representatives coming to represent their country at an international gathering.  I have a thing for international gatherings2.  I blame my father taking me to Rotary International Conventions when I was little.

I don’t recall a lot of details, but I recall the excitement of 1984 when I was 7 and the Olympics were in Los Angeles.  I won a Sam the Olympic Eagle3 doll at a carnival of some sort at the local library.  In 1988 I was actually in Portugal with my family for most of the Olympics and was in a cafe to see the finish of the women’s marathon as Rosa Mota took the gold.  The enthusiasm of everyone in the room was pretty hard for even a dense 11 year old to miss.

And on and on it went.  Every four years (or, starting in 1992, every two) I get all geeked out and start caring about sports and the athletes that compete.  This used to mean begging my parents for some stupid souvenir magazine at the supermarket or stealing the newspaper inserts from the, turned in to visits to the library to learn more about them, and somewhere around 1996 became constantly checking the internet for updates.  And, whenever possible, complaining about the horrible coverage and commentators on NBC4.  And I never once wanted to participate in any sport.  Nothing about the Olympics ever inspired me to be active.  I just really enjoyed watching the flags, the fans from all over the world, the athletes who represent the best of their nation, and, usually, the camaraderie and sportsmanship between athletes from all over the world5.

In between Olympics, I get excited when the bidding cycles come around, when IOC meets to pick a winner6, and when the host city starts promoting the games.   Needless to say, I’ve been on the mailing list for London 2012 since July, 2005.  (The London Organizing Committee is actually a customer of my company’s and I was hoping they might need some on-site support for the event, but it looks like they’ve got enough competent people on their team.  Shucks.)

So where is all this going?  Why did I start a running blog a few weeks ago only to ramble on about how I love the Olympics and how it has nothing to do with the fact that I much more recently learned I love running?  Thanks for asking.  The reason is twofold;  One, I’ve had a cold the last couple of days and have no energy to do anything, including thinking.  So I’m writing this in lieu of going for a run on what turned out to be a beautiful day.  *damn you sky!*  Two, on Wednesday, London 2012 revealed the mascots for the Olympic and Paralympic games; Wenlock and Mandeville.

Wenlock and Mandeville are ALIVE!

Yeah, they look ridiculous, but I’m quickly learning to love them.  Thinking back, the 80s had generic cartoon animals as mascots; 1980 had Misha the Russian bear, 1984 had Sam, designed by a Disney artist, Winter 1988 had Hidy and Howdy, cowboy bears that welcomed people to Calgary all the way up through 2007, Summer 1988 had 호돌이 (Hodori) the tiger with a hat that looked like it could take your head off like OddJob.  And then things went kind of downhill.  Do you remember Cobi, the vaguely Picasso-esque Sheepdog from Barcelona?  Or Håkon and Kristin, the vaguely Norwegian children from 1994?  Or Petra and Sondre, the amputees representing the Paralympics in 92 and 94?  How about the Snowlets from Nagano, Olly, Syd, and Mille from Sydney, or Powder, Copper, and Coal from Salt Lake City?  No, I didn’t think so.

With the exception of Izzy, the first CGI mascot, who isn’t really notable for any positive reason, everything between Hodori and Athena and Phevos barely even register in my memory.  Not that Athena and Phevos were really good mascots, but they mark the beginning on the modern era of mascots where we’re not trying to represent a nationally significant animal.  Nowadays, the organizing committees apparently just go for something simple and elegant, vaguely blobesque, yet easy to animate with a computer and manufacture as a plush doll.  This strategy brought us Neve and Gliz, the snowball and ice cube from Torino 2006, the Fuwa (Beibei (贝贝), Jingjing (晶晶), Huanhuan (欢欢), Yingying (迎迎), Nini (妮妮)) from Beijing 2008, and Miga, Quatchi, Mukmuk, and Sumi from Vancouver 2010, which are sort of back to being nationally significant animals, but still vaguely blobesque and half mythical.

Which brings us to Wenlock and Mandeville.  According to their origins video, they are apparently literally blobs, formed from some molten steel that an insomniac contractor named George almost gets killed by, then steals from the Olympic job site on his last day of work before retirement.  He brings the blobs home to his grandchildren that he and his wife are apparently raising but whom can’t be courteous enough to wait for grandpa to get home before eating his cake.  Once he molds them in to blobby statue and presents them to the kids they are, of course, brought to life by a rainbow over London.  So, yeah, they’re blobs because they came from molten metal.  I actually like that a lot better than arbitrary blobbiness.

So we’ve got Wenlock, named for the village of Much Wenlock, where Dr. William Penny Brookes started the Olympian Class in 1850, which he renamed to the Wenlock Olympian Games in 1859 after adopting events from Zappas‘ Olympics in Athens, which in 1890 gave birth to the International Olympic Committee and the rotating four year program that survives today.

And then we’ve got Mandeville, named for the village of Stoke Mandeville7, where in 1948 Ludwig Guttmann started the Stoke Mandeville Games at a local rehab hospital, later renamed to the World Wheelchair and Amputee Games, still held annually, but in 1960 started the tradition of the Paralympic games.

And there we go.  They now have their own Facebook (W and M) pages and Twitter (W and M) accounts, where they promote the Olympics in first person mascot ways.  And they’re an industrial byproduct crammed to the brim with history.  What’s not to love?

My favorite moment, of course, is Wenlock striking the Usain Bolt pose.  Hopefully some more athletes will come up with trademark showboat poses for the animators to emulate.

Hidy and Howdy

Show 7 footnotes

  1. And this is a limited exception; I had coworkers who ran a Fantasy Football league and taught me enough to participate.  And I vaguely followed the playoffs onward the years the Red Sox and Patriots made it.  Primarily because of the aforementioned coworkers.  Whom I miss, frankly.  Though I don’t miss professional sports. ↩
  2. I do get a little in to following the World Cup every few years. ↩
  3. Not to be confused with Sam the American Eagle ↩
  4. I don’t know if it’s getting worse or if I was just less cynical, but I didn’t complain as much when I was young. ↩
  5. Yes, I was aware of nations boycotting one anothers’ games, the Friendship Games, and other generally un-Olympic attitudes going on around me, but I still think at it’s core the Olympic movement is a good thing. ↩
  6. Next up, South Africa on July 6, 2011; between Annecy, Munich, Germany, and Pyeongchang for Winter 2018! ↩
  7. Not to be confused with the stage play The Adventures of Stoke Mandeville, Astronaut and Gentleman, which I hope gets performed at more theaters as a result of my little blobby friend. ↩

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Heart Rate Training, Part II

May 17, 2010 No comments

This is part 2 of 2.  Which means that if you missed part 1, you are certainly missing out.  There’s probably a hole in your soul that is shaped approximately like this prior post.  Now that you’ve filled that void, you are appropriately prepared to continue.  Wear protection.  (And yes, I am well aware that this is not “next week” from said prior post’s perspective.  I repent.)

Zones

Once you’ve got a max heart rate, the rest of heart rate training follows a fairly simple logic.  Work out at different heart rates between resting and max and get different benefits out of the work out.  Fortunately, there’s not quite as many interpretations of zones as there are ways to divine (a.k.a. estimate) max heart rate, but it’s close.

The good news is that they’re all telling you the same thing; just dividing the zones in slightly different places.  What makes this less fishy than it might appear is a reminder that your heart rate is a continuum.  Your body is always metabolizing a mixture of different compounds.  When a zone is described as working your body in a specific way, that is the primary effect that the work out will have on your body, not the only effect.

I’m looking at three different approaches, which are pretty indicative of the three mindsets people have on the matter.

BrianMac, the British webmaster who has compiled information from many different sources, splits heart rate training in to four zones;

  1. 60-70% of Max; the recovery zone
  2. 70-80% of Max; the aerobic zone
  3. 80-90% of Max; the anaerobic zone
  4. 90-100% of Max; the redline zone

Short version: zone 1 builds endurance and burns fat, zone 2 builds cardio aerobic capacity, burns some fat, and should be the target for long runs, zone 3 helps increase your anaerobic threshold (the point at which you can’t convert glycogen to lactic acid any more), and zone 4 is working fast twitch muscle fibers via short interval workouts.

However, unlike most other zone training schemes, these percentages are not a straight percentage of max heart rate, but calculated as a percentage of the difference between your resting heart rate and max heart rate. So we take that magic number (195 for me) and subtract our resting heart rate (58 for me, according to the magical mystery Garmin chest strap), then do the percentages off that number and tack the resting rate back on to get our zone ranges. For me, rounding, this would be;

  1. 140 – 154 bpm
  2. 154 – 167 bpm
  3. 167 – 181 bpm
  4. 181 – 195 bpm

Which seems fairly reasonable.

Most other heart rate training programs take a straight percentage of the max heart rate, avoiding all that messy resting heart rate math.  Sally Edwards‘ program, for example splits in to five zones:

  1. 50-60% of Max; the healthy heart zone
  2. 60-70% of Max; the temperate zone
  3. 70-80% of Max; the aerobic zone
  4. 80-90% of Max; the anaerobic threshold
  5. 90-100% of Max; the redline zone

This is pretty close to BrianMac’s four zones, but with the “healthy heart” zone tacked on the bottom.  This extra zone essentially covers low level exercise where you’re strengthening your heart but not improving your fitness.  Never a bad thing to do, but it’s not going to improve performance if that’s what you’re going for.  After that, Sally’s zones are the same; zone 2, burn about 85% fat, zone 3, improve cardio capacity (burn fat and carbs about equally), zone 4, burn carbs until you can’t process the glycogen any more, and zone 5, that all out effort for the fast twitch fibers.  For me, that’s 97-117 bpm in zone 1, 117-136 bpm in zone 2, 136-156 bpm in zone 3, 156-175 bpm in zone 4, and 175-195 bpm in zone 5.

Way off from BrianMac’s charts.  Wow.  Let’s complicate matters.

Marius Bakken chops things up a little bit differently.  Though he’s not quite as catchy with a clever name for each zone, his divisions come a little bit closer to BrianMac’s magic math.

  1. <70% of Max; easy running
  2. 70-80% of Max; junk miles
  3. 80-87% of Max; anaerobic threshold (optimal training)
  4. 87-90% of Max; pushing the pace
  5. 90-95% of Max; really hard 5k-10k work

Note that he’s not pulling any punches on his description of what everyone else calls aerobic exercise.  He’s presenting this from a single viewpoint; how to improve your endurance running.  If burning fat is a priority for you, then these aren’t junk miles.  If improving performance is your goal, then they are.  Remember, you still burn fat in an anaerobic workout, but at a lesser rate as about half the energy is coming from glycogen stores.  For me, this puts my ranges at sub 136 bpm for zone 1, 136-156 bpm for zone 2, 156-170 bpm for zone 3, 170-175 bpm for zone 4, and 175-185 bpm for zone 5.

I really like the fact that he calls anaerobic training “optimal” training.  In short, this is where the majority of your training should be if you’re trying to increase stamina in the long haul.  According to this approach, at least.  Before I get in to that, a few quick facts;

  • You can’t change your maximum heart rate.  Max heart rate does not improve with fitness.  It’ll decrease with age, which is why all the formulas to estimate it involve some voodoo math involving your age, but unless you’re taking certain heart medications it won’t go up.
  • You can lower your resting heart rate.  Resting heart rate will lower as your improve.  Take the time to measure it periodically – maybe once a month – especially if you’re using BrianMac’s training zones.
  • You can increase your anaerobic threshold.  And need to.  This is what holds you back.  This is “the wall.”  The more time you spend training in the anaerobic zone, pushing this threshold, the more you’re conditioning yourself to be able to stay there longer.  Essentially, you’re teaching your body to provide oxygen longer so you’re not switching to all-glycogen as soon, and then to metabolize glycogen longer so you can continue to maintain that level of effort.

This  is where endurance success dawned on me.  I’m able to maintain my target marathon race pace for a little bit more than a half marathon distance, but simply run out of energy before I reach the finish line.  After posting a recent DailyMile workout, my DM friend Kimberly pointed out that my heart rate was kind of high for the pace I was running.  At first I was kind of defensive, pointing out the math and some of the details from my Garmin TC log that doesn’t import to DailyMile, but when it comes down to it, she was right.  That was exactly the problem.

I spent a majority of that run in the upper end of the anaerobic zones based on BrianMac and Sally Edwards’ charts, and was in the redline zone for Marius Bakken’s.  If running the pace I want to target for 26 miles puts me metabolizing glycogen the whole time, then that’s clearly not going to work.  Workouts at this pace are what I need to do to push that anaerobic threshold and improve my fitness to where this pace becomes an aerobic workout.  While they’re “junk miles” for training, if I can go a whole race in that zone, I’m golden.  Or, rather, should probably push harder (and look for a corporate sponsor…).

Summary

I know, too late.

Below 80% of your max heart rate, you’re burning mostly fat and improving your heart health.  Go slow enough and it’s not burning a whole lot of fat, but is great for warmups and cooldowns.

Above 80% of your max heart rate, you’re only getting about half your energy from burning fat.  As your heart rate increases to the point where it can’t process oxygen for aerobic energy, adenosine triphosphate and creatine phosphate give way glycolysis, the process that converts glycogen stores to energy.  Go fast enough and you’re not even really doing that; you’re just depleting what you’ve got.  But while you’re able to maintain this level of effort you are conditioning your body to do it longer.

Throw it All Out The Window

So now that I’ve gone and distilled years of scientific research in to a single threshold (not to insult said research; but I need thing simple for my own benefit), there’s another approach published by TriAthlete Mark Allen, ignoring your max heart rate and taking a reverse approach to conditioning.  Instead of zone training, he simply comes up with a formula to identify your personal max aerobic threshold.

  • 180 – [your age] ± 5 based on experience

Yup, experience.  Essentially, he wants you to subtract 5 bpm if you don’t currently work out, subtract 2-3 if you work out 1-2 times per week, and add 5 bpm if you’ve been working out for more than a year at 7 or more times per week.  Plus 5 bpm if you’re over 55 or under 25, then another 5 on top of that for over 60 or under 20.  That’s 148 for me, just a bit lower than the lower end of the aerobic zones in the other approaches.

What’s important about Allen’s approach, is that he’s telling people to stay in the aerobic zone for most workouts, then return to anaerobic a couple of times a week only when the aerobic training efforts plateau.

I’m sticking with plan A for now, as I’ve been inadvertently taking Allen’s approach up until recently and know damn well that I’ve plateaued.  Essentially, less junk miles, more quality speed workouts, and paying more attention to my heart rate.  Maybe more Cheerios.

What you should find, if you target pace based on heart rate, is that your workouts will fall in to certain pace patterns, similar to the paces recommended by most decent training plans.  Most of these plans base the pace off a recent race pace you provide, which is essentially assuming that your race pace is zone 4/5 and extrapolating from there.  Using heart rate zones instead will help you target paces that will let you improve upon what you’re truly capable of, which may or may not be the pace you ran at a recent race.  (Greg McMillan’s pace estimator1, for example, tells me that based on my 5k PR I should be capable of a 3:09 marathon, something that’s not going to happen unless I can improve my anaerobic threshold to sustain a 7:15 pace for more than 15 miles.)

Next post, definitely some pictures, methinks.

Show 1 footnote

  1. Warning; plays music. ↩

Training , ,
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Race Report: Throo the Zoo 5k run & walk

May 10, 2010 2 comments

It’s been quite a while since I ran a 5k. Not for lack of want; just for lack of calendars intersecting my physical location. I think the last time was the New Hampshire State Police D.A.R.E. Classic Road Race in New Hampshire1. Since then our trip down the eastern seaboard has simply not encountered any big race communities. Every community has races, but we were just not quite in the right spots at the right times2.

Whenever we book more than a few days in a given city, I almost immediately check out the listings on Running In The USA to see what’s going on. When we committed to Louisville we already had plans to run the Derby Festival Marathon and Mini, but when I learned about Throo the Zoo just two weeks later it was hard to resist.

As the name implies, this race doesn’t go around the Zoo. It goes though (or, “Throo,” if you will) it.  Right through Gorilla Country, to be specific. Now, I was a little disappointed when I realized how small Louisville Zoo is – technically, only the last 1.2ish miles are IN the zoo, but they did a great job with the space they had available: a loop around the parking lot, hook through the park across the street, in through a service entrance past the African Lion, in to Gorilla Country, past a few cheering Woolly Monkeys and the supportive but silent Zebras, before a right turn out through the main entrance for a grand finish in the side parking lot where they had all the post-race love set up.

Yesterday was pushing 90 degrees, but a storm brought a cold front in over night. This made for a very chilly time waiting around for the race to start, but awesome running weather.  According to NOAA, it was 52 degrees, which seems about right.

Race organizers made a big deal about the race starting at 8 AM sharp, but there was a slight delay while they finished closing off the road.  Apparently, despite publicizing that they needed to close the roads at 7:45 and people should get there early, people were still pulling in at 8.  Other than that, they were pretty true to their word regarding the race start.  Personally, I think they could have put up a few more maps of the course, or maybe signs pointing to the start line, as many people apparently couldn’t find the start line.  (There was a very clear map right in front of the Zoo, but just the one.)

However, despite the arrows all pointing one direction, we all lined up facing the wrong way.  Organizers took it in stride and announced how proud he was of us all for finding the start line, but that we were all on the wrong side of it.  Shuffle shuffle shuffle and you’ve got yourself a nice chaotic chute all ready to run.

Now, despite getting nearly 1800 participants, this is really a small event.  It’s run by a few Zoo employees, members of the River City Racing staff (the race arm of the local Fleet Feet store), and a few volunteers.  There’s a few sponsors, but I don’t think any huge corporate money is coming in, so they try to keep costs down to maximize the benefit to the Zoo.  But the course is clearly communicated on their web site, along with the fact that there’s no chip timing or prize money (top prize is “the coveted ostrich egg award” – a real (unfertilized) ostrich egg emptied out mounted to a plaque!) and pretty much all the other details that people rage against on Active.com.

Fact is, it was well organized for it’s size and really only had one true flaw: they’ve grown too big to start the race in the direction they started it.  As with any local race, there’s tons of people who line up in the wrong spot.  It’s never possible to position yourself perfectly, but if you’ve never run a 5k before, you probably shouldn’t be shoulder to shoulder with the high school track kids, and if you’re looking to PR a sub-18, you certainly shouldn’t be behind me!  I thought I had wedged myself a reasonable distance back from the track kids, but should have actually been in front of the two old guys3 in the shiny new Boston Marathon jumpsuits that had their butts in a 12 year old’s face and their, well, other end getting kind of inappropriate with the aforementioned track kids.

The guy with the mic4 did try to encourage people to line up a bit more realistically, mostly stressing that he didn’t want any little kids getting trampled, but, of course, nobody budged.  So, human nature aside, the factor that organizers had control over was the course, right?  The first quarter mile or so heads through a tree lined road in the northeast corner of the parking lot (see satellite view on the map) which is less than the width of two car lanes and sports rather steep hills on either side.  That, coupled with the absolute lack of people’s consideration for those who might be faster or slower than them, resulted in a very chaotic first stretch and a whole lot of leaping up 45 degree inclines and hoping a sprained ankle doesn’t occur.  I even had to hop around a woman with a jog stroller!  (In her defense, though, she was pretty darn fast and not too far behind me in the end.)

I’m not sure the Zoo has any areas that can really handle the volume of people that participate in a more fluid manner, but they need to rethink the starting position (or, as some have suggested, cap the number of entries to a lower volume of bodies) for next year.  Maybe the race could actually start in the park across the street from the Zoo?

One we rounded the first bend and people were able to spread and thin out a bit, things were pretty much awesome.  The whole course was very clearly marked – cones and arrows in the parking lot and park, then chains and flag ropes within the Zoo – which was essential given the number of twists and turns.  The portions in the Zoo was fun, passing the Woolly Monkeys, who cheered wildly, and the Zebras, who did not.  We also apparently passed right by the Rhinos5 but I totally didn’t notice that at the time.  Go me.

And just as you’re getting in to the groove of the Zoo, they spit you out the front entrance and loop around to the finish line.  Bam.  It’s done.  My watch read 3 miles even, but with all the twists and turns, I’m willing to believe it was a true 5k.  I was pushing for a PR, but with the wind, my lack of sleep and preparation, and the clusterpunks at the start line, that clearly wasn’t happening.  I did, however, for the first time ever, not get passed by anyone.  That never happens!  I jockeyed passed dozens of people in the first quarter mile, then continued to pick people off, first in huge clusters, then one at a time, getting more excited as the race progressed and I realized the significance.  I was getting faster with each mile, not slower.  Pretty frickin’ cool.  Even the old guys in the Boston getups.  I even managed to pick off one of the high school track kids just as we cleared the Zoo entrance.

Reality check, however; ahead of me were still seven other superstar kids, plus the twelve year old that everyone was concerned about getting trampled.  Twelve years old and he’s running a 19:25 5k.  Damn.

Post-race, things were laid out well; get your door prize ticket, get your fluids, get your bagels, get your fruit bars, get out of the way.  It worked great for the first couple hundred finishers, then it became an amorphous blob of people.  There was plenty to go around, though, and a DJ rambled on and on to try and keep people moving and entertained while we waited for all the finishers.  The idea was to keep people around until the Zoo opened (race bib = free entry!), so we spent half an hour giving out door prizes6 before going through the awards.  I didn’t know how many people were ahead of me and was hoping they were mostly high school kids so I might’ve placed in my age group, but I did not.  So sad.

All in all, a good day and a great event.  I was happy with my finish (19:52, 36th overall, 4th in my age group7) given the circumstances, and would do it again if we’re back in Louisville again at the right time of year.  I’ve also heard there are other Zoos that use races as a fundraiser.  I like the cheering monkeys.

Show 7 footnotes

  1. It’s actually run on the tracks of the NH Motor Speedway – wicked fun, even if you’re not in to NASCAR. I fully endorse it if you’re anywhere in the vicinity of New Hampshire! ↩
  2. There was a cool looking Halloween 5k run by a fire department near where we were in southern NJ, but “near wear we were” turned out to be more than an hour away. ↩
  3. I use the term old lovingly and somewhat sarcastically.  They were probably no more than 60, max. ↩
  4. Minor gripe: you need more speakers and a bigger amp, plus the crowd management skills to say something unimportant like “may I have your attention please?” before saying the important stuff… ↩
  5. You might notice the focal point of this photo is a blue recycling bin. In general, I was very impressed with the race photography at this event – I believe it was a one man shop, but he managed to get photos of what seems like every runner in three different points on the course.  Actually good shots.  That never happens.  It’s just the rhino/recycling shot that baffles me. ↩
  6. Quick tip guys; we’re all wearing a bib with a unique number on it – you don’t need to give out little purple tickets too – just draw bib numbers!  Ideally before we finish. ↩
  7. Though, the third place overall winner was in my age group, which in some events would remove him from age group awards and bump me up a spot.  But not here. ↩

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Heart Rate Training, Part I

May 7, 2010 2 comments

One of the things I committed to doing in order to improve my training is to start using heart rate based training instead of just taking the pace times that Runners World SmartCoach or similar tools auto-generated. Very shortly thereafter, I learned that there’s about 50 different “best practices” on how to go about this.

I’ve rewritten this post several times trying to figure out where to start and how many of the different “how to” plans I found to even get in to. During that time, both Active.com and Stephen Auker (@nimblerunner) published well written articles on heart rate training, so in this version I’ll try to cover what they didn’t.

In a nutshell, heart rate training is simply taking the fact that your body metabolizes differently at different heart rates in order to deliver energy to your muscles (whether your exertion is running, aerobics, weightlifting, or anything else) and breaking these different heart rates down in to zones so as to provide a definition for the type of impact that each level of effort will have on your body (both short term and long term).

These zones are not static numbers for all people.  Everything is expressed as a percentage of your maximum heart rate – that is, the heart rate your body can not maintain for more than a minute or so and the point at which you physically can not exert any further effort1.  Two things vary from study to study, coach to coach, and expert to expert; the actual definitions of the zones themselves and how to calculate the percentages.  Kind of the key to everything, right?

Max Heart Rate

One thing everyone agrees on is that the only way to truly know your maximum heart rate is to get a proper stress test done.  Best case: cardiologist.  Second best: athletic coach or personal trainer with the proper equipment and experience to do it right2.  Third best: you with the proper equipment and safety precautions on a treadmill.  And the worst?  Use some mathematical formula you found on some jackass’ blog to estimate it and consider it gospel.

Let’s start with The Big Lie:

  • 220 – [your age]

This formula is probably the most common; posted on the wall at your gym, printed in the American Council on Exercise‘s instructor training materials, and repeated time and time again as “the best way.”  Probably because it came from Dr. William Haskell and his boss Dr. Sam Fox at a World Health Organization talk regarding Haskell’s 1968 findings that would soon be published as this chart:

Almost every reference to this formula goes on to say how it’s junk and there are better formulas.  Physical Therapist Doug Kelsey writes how the Haskell’s findings were based on a small sample of people – all men, all under sixty, and none of them particularly active.  He did no hands on studies, but rather extrapolated from existing research in order to work out what a safe level of exercise would be for a person who’d recently had a heart attack.  Personal Trainer Christian Finn and Kelsey both tell the story of how Haskell and Fox were looking at the chart and just happened to notice the pattern of maximums being around 220 – your age.

On a small sample.  Of one gender.  Of a limited age range.  And a limited activity level.

Moving on, a number of “better” formulas have been proposed, 43 of which were compared to actual stress test results in a 2002 University of New Mexico study. I’ve come across some sites that reference this study and indicate that the result was that 205.8 – (0.685 * [your age]) is the best one to use3.  The point that’s missing is the first conclusion of the UNM study: “Currently, there is no acceptable method to estimate HRmax.”  It goes on to acknowledge that the 205.8 formula is the best they found, but another oft-ignored caveat on that is that “the error
(Sxy=6.4 b/min) is still unacceptably large.”

For the love of God, let’s move on.  Eh?

I’m not going to list out all 43, but here’s the most common formula’s I’ve found on assorted and sundry running-centric web sites:

  • 220 – [your age]
  • 205.8 – (0.685 * [your age])
  • Men: 210 – (0.5 * [your age]) – (0.05 % [your weight]) + 4
    Women: 210 – (0.5 * [your age]) – (0.01 % [your weight])4
  • 217 – (0.85 * [your age])5

For me, that’s 187, 183.195 (round to 183), 190, or 188.95 (round to 189), depending on which formula I use. And I’ve seen my heart rate hit 193 on my monitor. Granted, the monitor isn’t necessarily the most accurate device in the world, but my heart didn’t explode.  (That’s even beyond the 6.4 bpm margin of error UNM acknowledged!)

All of these methods are estimates. They will get you in the ball park, but not necessarily be accurate. When using the max heart rate to determine the range of training zones, a reasonable estimate is good, but not great. The best way to truly find my max heart rate is a proper stress test, but not having a viable place to do that at the moment, I’m going with 194 so that math works.

To be continued . . . I’ve been sitting on this post for so long it’s making my head hurt.  It’s 10 PM, I’m running a 5k in the morning, then catching a flight to visit my mother for Mother’s Day.  So we’ll make this a two parter and pick up with the different zones (and different interpretations of them) and what they’re for next week.  Until then, remember the moral of the story: estimations are estimations and tests are tests.  Find a place to get a proper test done.

Show 5 footnotes

  1. Actually, its all based on your effective max heart rate; most researchers believe that the true maximum is just above that and not physically attainable during exercise because the body won’t let you get that close to the edge. ↩
  2. The guy who just got hired at the new Lifetime Fitness they built last week who has you walk up a treadmill and plugs numbers in to the computer so he can recite the generic results back to you does not qualify. ↩
  3. Actually, one particularly shoddy site didn’t even get the formula right and referenced 205.6 as the starting point. ↩
  4. Sally Edwards, Training With 5 Exercise Heart Rate Training Zones ↩
  5. BrianMac, Heart Rate Training Zones ↩

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Five Weeks To Go: Time for a Change

April 27, 2010 3 comments

Within twenty-four hours of completing the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon, my wife and I were discussing the next races we’d be doing.  Ceridwen, who had sworn off half marathons following the Derby Mini, has decided that maybe – just maybe – she’ll consider another one, but in the meantime she wants to focus on shorter distances and see what sort of time she can hit if she actually trains for a 5k instead of doing them on a whim or because I’m doing one (or a longer race that has a 5k attached).  I, on the other hand, am stubbornly sticking to my ridiculous goal of qualifying for Boston in the open division.

Realistically, I’ve got until the end of the summer to run a 3:10 marathon.  Registration for Boston 20111 is this fall, and, if recent history is any indication, it will fill up fairly quickly.  Granted, I’m not really all that gung-ho about running Boston, but I figured qualifying in time to have a choice in the matter is a reasonable time limit on the goal.

So, next attempt is in just over five weeks: the Sunburst Races Marathon; from the Hall of Fame to Notre Dame as they say.  Ceridwen will run the 5k and I’ll hit the marathon.  South Bend, Indiana is fairly close to Elkhart, Indiana, the RV Capital of the US, which we’ve been meaning to visit to take RV geek factory tours, so that will be our first post-Louisville stop on our meandering route to Denver2.

What this all comes down to is this: I’ve been contemplating over the last couple of days3 what was so different between my preparation for the Museum of Aviation Marathon in January, where I PRed by over 10 minutes and finally broke 3:30, and this past weekend, where I regressed from that point by over 15 minutes?

Yes, Louisville is far hillier than the Robbins Air Force Base.  Yes, I consciously pushed harder at the start of Louisville than I did in Warner-Robins, but I’ll be doing that again in five weeks, so I need to focus on the prep work that I did differently.  Right?

What’s Missing

  1. Cross Training – We didn’t get out a lot, but I did ride my bike far more often leading up to January than I did in April.  Also, after January, I completely dropped core workouts – which is really inexcusable given the fact that I’m married to a personal trainer.  So, step 1, some freakin’ sit ups and upper leg workouts.
  2. Hills – I don’t know how I missed them.  In Brunswick, GA, where I was living leading up to MoA, sports the lovely Sidney Lanier Bridge, with it’s sexy 480 foot rise in just over 8/10th of a mile.  I hit that at least a half dozen times in the weeks leading up to the marathon, but didn’t find (or, frankly, seek out) anything comparable in the intervening months.  Florida was (and presumably still is) wicked flat, especially the routes I had available on Route 1, and while there are some hills in Shepherdsville, I haven’t done any specific hillwork.  Easy to remedy.  Damn it.
  3. Easy Run Pace – In leading up to January, I didn’t really have a target pace for my easy runs and they ended up being about a 7:30-7:45 pace most days.  Post-January, I tried to follow my training plan more accurately and stick to 8:35ish paces.  As a result, I had several long runs that I wasn’t able to maintain for the full distance.  Time to move my target paces from computer generated numbers to heartrate and PRE based targets!
  4. Beer – My wife claims I was drinking more beer during my training for January.  Mostly due to hitting pub trivia more often.  But, overall, I’m pretty sure it’s not that big a discrepancy.  What I do know is that I’ve definitely put on a few pounds.  So, perhaps we’ll try the less beer approach (and maybe a few less Indian buffets) and focus on not having to haul quite as much me around South Bend.

Let’s see how this goes.

Show 3 footnotes

  1. Which will be on my father’s birthday; wouldn’t that be a hoot? ↩
  2. Where we’ve registered for the Warrior Dash, bought Megadeth and Social Distortion tickets, and hope to finally take part in a SkirtSports SkirtChaser 5k. ↩
  3. Days of “recovery” taken to a new level of lazing about due to gross, wet weather. ↩

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Race Report: Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon

April 25, 2010 1 comment

Don’t hold back…
If you think about it too much, you may stumble, trip up, fall on your face…
Don’t hold back…
You think its time you get up, crunch time, like a sit up, come on keep pace…
Don’t hold back…

I woke up feeling strong, prepared, and ready to run a great race.  It was pouring all night and was supposed to pour again in the afternoon, but rumor had it that the odds of a dry run were pretty good.  So I was feeling pretty confident and decided to shoot for my stretch goal; qualifying for Boston.  It would be a 20 minute improvement on my PR, but this is my second to last reasonable attempt to BQ in the open division.  So I set out at a 7:15 pace with the plan of dropping back to the 3:20 pace group if things went to hell.  And off to hell they went.

But before we discuss the scenic route to hell, the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon itself: pretty much awesomely run from start to finish.  I don’t think I can find a single thing to fault in the entire event – and I can be quite the irritating nit-picky ass at times.  Okay, there’s the overuse of single-use plastic thing, but I’m trying really hard to forgive them for that.

Pre-Race

The KDF marathon is a one-way course.  The starting line is out in a residential neighborhood on the south end of Louisville, where, as one might suspect, there aren’t any huge urban parking garages or the like.  So, parking was downtown in huge urban parking garages with the promise of shuttles to the start line from three locations near the expo center.  A similar setup was used in Eugene last year, with parking out by the mall, but Louisville did it up right.  Where Eugene actually had to delay its start to give the buses time to shuttle everyone to the corrals, Louisville had dozens of buses waiting, the roads already closed to non-race traffic, and everyone down at the start line with plenty of time to spare.

A local elementary school served as a fluid exchange center, with thousands of water bottles available1 and probably near a hundred port-a-potties.  Of course there were lines when everyone tried to get that one last visit before lining up, but the lines moved quick and I was very impressed with how well the volunteers were able to funnel everyone in to the right spot.

I couldn’t find the 3:10 pace group at the start line (maybe there wasn’t one) so I just hung out near the hulking guy with the IronMan tattoo on his shoulder figuring he seemed the 3:10 type.  (The start gun was the last I saw of him.)

The Race

This will probably sound bitter.  It is not meant that way.  I have no regrets for my approach to this race.  I ignored the fact that my training hadn’t been going well.  I ignored the fact that I woke up the last few days with mystery pains in my shoulders.  I ignored the fact that I would need to improve my best pace by 20 minutes to do what I was trying to do.  But if I never try to do it, I’m certainly not going to succeed.  That’s how stretch goals work and I’m going to try it again in South Bend.

Mile 1 – Feelin’ good, feelin’ strong, feelin’ well, yeah, cocky.  I don’t often run with music, but I used it to power through to a PR in January and I picked up a snazzy pair of YurBuds at the expo (so that headphones would actually stay in my big slutty ears for 26.2 miles) so I went for it.  I keep my running mix on random, but it always starts on Galvanize.  It’s the perfect song for the start of a race – the tempo is nice and slow, but it’s still very energetic, plus all pep-talk-full and stuff.  Somehow I still did a 6:58 mile.  Oops.

Miles 2-4 – The course starts with a lap through Iroquois Park to turn us around from southbound to northbound.  The steepest part of the course (a whopping 2% grade) is at mile 2.5, according to the course elevation profile, but it kind of blinked by without notice.  Reinforce false sense of preparedness: check.

Miles 5-6 – You come out of the park and start heading north on Southern Parkway (which becomes 4th street, for those of you who actually know Louisville).  Not much excitement except for a nice wide, flat road for a while.

Mile 7 smelled like wet horses.  This is the reason we chose this race.  And part of why we chose Louisville as our home for a couple of months.  We entered Churchill Downs through the horse tunnels – blowing right past the No Baby No – Go Baby Go “traffic” light.  As we came up in to the infield I thought for a second that the Track Announcer was giving a Derby-style update on people as we ran through, but it turned out to be a recording of a recent horse race.  Still pretty frickin’ cool.

Miles 8 – 12 – When we came out of the downs and start heading for downtown again we were greeted with a pretty awesome view of the Louisville skyline.  I was pretty excited to already be in visual contact with the finish line, even as I realized that about a mile before it I’d be told to turn right and go visit some trendy suburbs.  The mini marathon and full (or “maxi” as the DOT traffic sign read) split ways just after mile 11, with the mini heading for Waterfront Park in a round about way and the full heading out to the hills.

Shortly after this realization, I passed under a rail bridge just as a train roared by.  As the sound faded enough for me to hear my music again, Everlast started belting out his cover of Folsom Prison Blues.  How apropos.  It made me smile.

This stretch of road is also home to the University of Louisville, and, apparently, several frat houses.  Sure to avoid letting me down when compared to University of Oregon students, University of Texas students, or any of the many students in Philly, they were out there in their “we’ll stop drinking when you stop running” shirts, screaming at the top of their lungs and staying true to their word.

Worst spectator sign: “Your half way there, Ashley!”  Ashley, I hate to break it to you, but your friends don’t know “you’re” from “your” and unless you’re running the 16 mile version of this race, they suck at math too.  At least they used the right “there.”

Best spectator sign:  “Charles Finley2: call your probation officer.”  Eight feet wide and gleaming.  I hope he appreciated the reminder.

After the courses split, things thinned out a lot.  Of the 15,000 people expected, there were 10,715 finishers in the mini and only 1095 in the full.  The remainder apparently ran the relay which has no results posted or just decided to bail due to the potential for rain.  As I crested the first hill, a spectator informed me that I was in the top 80.  He was apparently keeping track as best he could and letting everyone know where they stood.  This was probably the last I’d be at such a ranking.

Miles 13 – 19 – The 2.5 mile mark might be the steepest part of the course, but the gentle undulating hill that is the Louisville Highlands3 is what did me in.  (Well, that and the overconfident plan, fast start, and lack of military drive…)  My upper legs just started locking up on the hills.  I felt like I had energy but the legs wouldn’t make a running motion.  I walked a lot of the hills, pushing as best I could to make up the lost time, but it just wasn’t happening.  The 3:20 pace group caught up with me somewhere in mile 11 or 12 and while I stuck with them for a while, I lost them here.  The 3:30 pace group caught me and kept going.  The inexplicable 3:35 pace group did the same.

In Cherokee Park I caught up with a kid who was looking as miserable as I was.  It was his first marathon and the hills were doing him in.  I tried to cheer him up and remind him that all he has to do was finish.  I also accidentally lied to him and told him we were on the last big hill until the ramp up to cross the Ohio River.  Apparently there was one more long evil hill.  In my defense, I wanted to believe it was the last hill too.  Those that head east out of the floodplain must then head west back in to it.

Miles 20-25 – The race directors, though organized and skilled at their jobs, are cruel, cruel people.  When you get to Main Street the atmosphere starts picking up as the crowds get bigger4 and louder.  Then, about half way through mile 21, you pass the finish line and start running past the runners who are about to be done.  And we had almost a 10k left to go.  In Indiana.

On the less depressing side, I got to see the second place woman, Mariska Kramer, book it past all the mid-to-back pack mini-marathoners, which was quite a chore given the fact that they didn’t know she was coming.  The difference in pace was insane.  It was like a Dutch hyena flying past a herd of grazing buffalo 5.

The bridge over the Ohio River is wicked long.  We cleared nearly a mile in each direction.  And compared to the Talmadge Memorial Bridge6  in Savannah, GA and the Sidney Lanier Bridge in Brunswick, GA, it’s pretty much flat.  I wasn’t quite able to get back to my typical pace (let alone my race pace), but I was doing much better than in the Highlands.

Indiana was . . . quiet.  There were no crowds.  The only people out were volunteers running solo corner duty or the occasional somewhat confused looking citizen sitting on their porch.  There was no water stop until the ramp to go back to Kentucky, but one woman who lived along the river apparently decided to set up her own, for which I’m very grateful.

I wasn’t the only one suffering, but as we neared the highway again, I pointed out to the two people near me that I could see Kentucky again.  The woman said “you’re right – let’s do this!” and the three of us took off with renewed spirit.  Right around the corner was the best water station ever – about 40 Boy Scouts and their families, all screaming and cheering and making sure we got some fluids.

At the crest of the bridge a woman wearing a camouflage bra top and bikini bottom7 was screaming at the top of her lungs like a drill instructor.  The typical “you’re almost there” speech, but with all sorts of motivational “kick it in to high gear” and “give it everything you’ve got – and then some” and hand gestures and volume that made me fear for my life if I didn’t obey.  So it was maybe a little early to start pushing, but push I did.

Mile 26+ – I had to take a little breather before turning back on to Main Street, but once I did I pushed as hard as my body would let me.  Something in my leg started poking from the inside (is that bad?) and every muscle in my legs burned, but that only pushed me to finish faster.  I was dodging a lot of mini marathon walkers, and I may not have actually passed any marathoners, but I made up some time and finished just under 3:45.  Only 25 minutes slower than my moderately realistic back-up plan goal.

Definitely not my best race – in fact, by a few minutes it’s my third worst – but it was awesome fun and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.  A beautiful course, awesome volunteers, more than adequate supplies and services, and a finish line corral that doesn’t feel crowded at all.  I got my free cup of Michelob Ultra, stretched out on the lawn for a while, consumed all the water I could, and visited the BSA Adventure Base 100 exhibit before heading back to the Highlands for lunch.

Show 7 footnotes

  1. Filled with city tap water.  Seriously.  Single use plastic bottles containing the same thing I could get from a fountain.  Aargh. ↩
  2. Not the actual name on the sign, obviously, if you get the reference, but I can’t recall the actual name. ↩
  3. Apparently the neighborhood’s name has nothing to do with Scottish settlers. ↩
  4. The Kentucky Derby Festival really runs for four weeks leading up to the Derby, but the Thursday before the race it really kicks in to full swing with a county fair style in Waterfront Park; thus, many people downtown come out to cheer even if they have no idea what’s going on.  Much fun. ↩
  5. No offense intended to anyone at the grazing buffalo pace.  I am 100% of the any pace is an awesome pace mentality.  But if you saw it from my point of view, it was insane. ↩
  6. Home of the Savannah Bridge Run, which I’ve done twice and is awesomely fun. ↩
  7. Not like in a sexy “oh la la” kind of way – more like I “let me show you that I’m ripped so you respect me when I yell at you” kind of way. ↩

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Derby On

April 22, 2010 No comments

We just got back from the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon and Mini-Marathon Running Wild Expo.  (Mouthful, eh?)

For those of you wondering why the Kentucky Derby has a marathon, it’s all part of the month long Kentucky Derby Festival including a golf tournament, a basketball classic, the largest fireworks display in the world, a balloon show, charity events out the wazoo, waterfront concerts, and all manor of other festivities that lead up to the Derby itself.  We found out about it (and got a free T shirt) at the Philadelphia Marathon Expo.  Once they said that the race includes a portion on Churchill Downs (the home of the Kentucky Derby) we were hooked.  I’m a sucker for racing on out-of-the-ordinary routes.

Incidentally, the Derby Festival has had their Mini-Marathon (a half) for quite a while – this Saturday will be the 37th Mini but only the 9th Marathon.

But anyway, the expo.  These things are so frustrating, but something about this one was a little extra frustrating.  We got the essentials no problem;

Bib and Shirt

"897A, why aren't you at your post?"

I was kind of surprised that with custom printed bibs they didn’t slap our first names on to it, but that’s okay.  “Oh, hey, you, go!” is just as good as “Oh, hey, Keath, go!”  Usually when I hear my name on a course I can’t figure out who it came from anyway, so if someone shouts my name on a non-nametag race, I know it’s someone I actually know (or at least who knows me).

The packets came in big ol’ plastic bags to use as gear check.  Yup.  Plastic bags.  On Earth Day.  With the primary sponsor, Wal*Mart, handing out reusable grocery bags right around the corner.  Literally.  Wal*Mart of all companies.  Maybe thirty paces away.  C’mon folks!

Not to nag, though, expos are always environmental tragedies.  Let’s break it down quickly:

  • Good things:  not too crowded, easy to park near and get to, a very well organized BASDC1, and set up in a one-way-through corral so that no vendors get skipped and no attendee gets lost.
  • Bad things: the usual overabundance of paper ads that go straight in to recycling bin, the vendors in the aforementioned corrals feeling like they need to hand crap out to every single person who passes2, and the worst promo of all; a “single use” water bottle that doesn’t even have water in it.
Environmental rape in action

Exhibit A, on the left; a relatively reasonable promo. Exhibit B, on the right; stupidity in a bottle.

So yeah, local dentists’ conglomerate handed out pretty nice reusable water bottles that look like they’re sure to get a lot of use.  The city of Louisville, on the other hand, handed out the cheap plastic bottles that “local filtered water” comes in at your local convenience store.  With no water in it.  The label promotes the fact that Louisville is already filtered and has been voted the best tap water in America.  A lovely fact if it weren’t for the stupidity of a “disposable” bottle.  It was in my hands before the word “Refuse” even entered my mind.  Argh.  Gotta work on that.  It does have a nice sport spout, so I’ll try to use it as much as I can and hopefully rescue the tip for future use.

Post-expo we headed out to Waterfront Park and walked the multi-use path until construction wouldn’t let us go any further; probably about 4.8 miles round trip.  We didn’t mean to speed walk, but apparently we were hustling through at just under a 13:00 minute pace.  More importantly, it was awesome to be active for a while at the end of taper week.

This race has seemed like it’s in the far distance for quite some time now.  Then, all of a sudden, I got back from a friend’s wedding in LA and realized it was three weeks away.  I’m not nervous, per se, but my training pace hasn’t been where it was in the month leading up to my prior race, the Museum of Aviation Marathon in Warner-Robbins, GA.  That was an awesome race, I felt really strong for it, and I managed to PR by over 10 minutes to break the 3:30 mark.  My hope was to pick it up a bit and try to make the next 20 minutes to a Boston Qualifying time before Boston 2011 registration opens3, but that’s a stretch.  An even better stretch, of course, is to pick up 25 minutes and qualify for Exeter.  Given the reality of the recent training, I’ll be happy just to come close to my prior PR.  Hopefully I’ll feel up to pushing harder, at least reaching 3:20 if not faster.

All in all, I’m looking forward to running on Churchill Downs most.  The forecast calls for warm rainy weather, so we might not get to watch hot air balloons float overhead, but there’s a party at the finish line and I haven’t seen much between Brooks and Louisville other than the highway.  So off we go…

Show 3 footnotes

  1. Bib And Swag Distribution Center ↩
  2. I kid you not; one woman actually leaned out on one foot around her colleague who was talking to a runner so she could yelp out to us something along the lines of “can I give you this critical information on a medical breakthrough…” as we walked by! ↩
  3. More accurately, before it fills up.  In 2012 I’ll be 35 and they’ll make it easier for me, so I wanted to push to try to qualify in the open division before that happens. ↩

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