New Bedford HM RR (1:25:59)

New Bedford wasn't on my racing plan, but the Hampton half was cancelled due to poor weather. Even then, it wasn't necessarily the next half I would have chosen, but it turned out my parents were running it. And I love going to races with my parents. Also, they bribed me with promises of a St. Paddy's day dinner at their place afterwards, and who could say no to that?

In honor of it being St. Patrick's day and all, I decided to paint my nails, which only happens for particularly special races...you can see the result over on the left. (As a side note, I honestly don't know how people can paint their nails all the time. I do it maybe three times a year, and every time I find it extremely annoying.)

Race day was great. I met my parents at their place, and then we went down to the race together. I found one of my best running friends from college, Amy, almost by accident and was able to run a warm up with her and her teammates from Whirlaway, which was awesome. I find running a warm up with a group to be relaxing before a race. Maybe it reminds me of college cross-country. We finished our 2 mile warm up about 10-15 minutes before the start. We dropped off our layers and only waited maybe 5 minutes before the race started. This was a fairly sizable race, and we couldn't quite push our way to the front, but after about 400 meters or so we were moving at a good clip. We passed the first mile at 6:12. Too fast. A race start like this is difficult though. Sometimes it's almost better to go out a little faster, rather than going out at your designated pace where you'll spend more energy weaving around people. Somewhere around here Amy had to drop over to the side to tie her shoe. She eventually caught up to me (and finished a minute ahead of me). The girl is like the energizer bunny! Anyway, the first mile wasn't my fastest, so I don't think I necessarily went out too fast.

I never quite felt in control of the race though. You can see my splits below, and they're all over the place. Some of that has to do with the hills. I'm sure if you looked at my splits against an elevation map you'd find that that the faster splits were downhill. During some miles the wind was irritating, but then the course would turn down a road and the the wind would be gone. So it wasn't constant. After mile 7, I was really having trouble hanging tough. I vurped a few times...going off track here, but have you ever seen "Wreck It Ralph"?

It's a cool ode to video games movie. There's a go-cart racer in the movie named Vanellope von Schweetz. At one point she's getting ready to race and she tells Ralph that she's "so nervous she's thinks she's going to vurp, you know when some vomit mixes with a burp and rises up."

Somewhere around mile 7, I started vurping my gel, which has never happened to me before. I decided against taking a second gel. Also, I didn't wear my hydration belt, but I still can't actually get water from a cup into my mouth while I run. I did attempt it at almost every water station, and failed miserably. It's sort of embarrassing, and borderline ridiculous. Around here, I also wound up with a side stitch, but nothing that I couldn't run through. I'm not sure if it was poor hydration or poor spirit, but by mile 10 I was starting to wane. The picture to the right is a fair depiction of how I felt...

When I crossed the 10 mile mark I was running an average pace of 6:28. The next 3 miles were tough, as they always are in a half marathon, but I don't usually slow down so much. My mile 11 and 12 splits were awful. 12-13 was awful too, but there was a fairly long hill there, so I can cut myself some slack for that.

The mile 10, 11, and 12 splits are bothering me. Something wasn't right there. Either I went out too fast, something wasn't right with the hydration stuff, or I let myself give in...I'd like to study my HR splits, but I wore the Polar HR strap and I can't get my HR splits unless I connect to their site and download the data from my watch. I haven't been able to do that yet. It's a little frustrating because you can view your HR splits on the Garmin without having to connect it to a computer. Anyway, I'd like to get that information and see if I glean something from it.

I did get my average heart rate from the Polar watch, which was 162. The watch is claiming that 162 is 87% of what it calculates my maximum HR should be. So now I'm wondering what percentage of your maximum HR is one suppose to be at when they run a half marathon? (Feel free to throw in your 2 cents if you train by heart rate. I'd love to know what others think on the subject.)

While my 10, 11, 12, and 13 mile splits were bad, my last 0.1 was fast. I saw the clock, and knew there was still a chance I could break 1:26 if I hauled it in. My official chip time wound up being 1:25:59, which is a ginormous PR for me. And so, it was a great day. Not to mention that I got to see so many running friends, and many of them ran well too. Another college friend, Justin, ran a PR. My co-worker, Rachel, ran a PR. And, of course, Amy, who wound up with an official chip time of 1:25:01! And she stopped to tie her shoe!

The rest of the day was awesome. I ran back to find my parents on course, and ran with them to the finish. I wound up with 19.5 miles for the day. I had wanted to run 20, but we also walked almost a mile to and from where we parked the car, and I was standing from 10:00 to 1:30, so good enough.

Back at my parents place, Nick and the kids were waiting for us. We ate our corn-beef and cabbage, and whoopie pies, and just had a great time. Overall, a great day! Huge thanks to Nick for watching the kids all day, and to my parents for driving me to the race AND making dinner!

Now there's Boston to think about...

NB HM Splits

Mile 1: 6:12

Mile 2: 6:31

Mile 3: 6:44

Mile 4: 6:33

Mile 5: 6:17

Mile 6: 6:17

Mile 7: 6:08

Mile 8: 6:29

Mile 9: 6:30

Mile 10: 6:39

Mile 11: 6:47

Mile 12: 6:45

Mile 13: 6:54

Last .1: 5:40

Hampton Half in 5 days!

• I'm still sick. Blah! My sniffles turned into another cough, but not as bad as the previous cough. My heart rate is higher than usual, but not crazy high. Just before I start running it's about 70 (20 beats higher than usual, but still lower than it was with my last cold). The half marathon should be interesting...my goal is to run 1:40 or better. I honestly have no idea how realistic my goal is.
  
• The real goal for the half is to figure what kind of shape I'm in. I'm running a marathon on May 1 and need to determine what pace is realistic for that race. I'd like to qualify for Boston. Boston will be on my birthday next year. What better way to spend your birthday, right? (Nick says statements like that only prove that I'm off my rocker.)
  
• Despite my poor training and lack of dieting, I have reached my pre-pregnancy weight. It took 5 months. I'm a little surprised. Emily is exclusively breastfed and hasn't started solids yet. With Kaylee, I didn't take off the last few pounds until she was eating solids for a number of months.
  
• I'm glad that I'm back to my normal weight, but I still don't look great. My belly looks deflated, but I wasn't happy with my belly until about 1.5 years after Kaylee was born. It just takes times (at least for me).
• I find the heart rate discussion interesting. I had no idea that during races your heart rate is 5-10 beats higher than usual. It's interesting though, the last two years I've started running with music during races, but not to help me run faster. I find that listening to music at the start (of a 5K especially) I am more relaxed and less likely to run the first mile too fast. In fact, a lot of the music I listen to when I run is slower. I know this contrary to what most people find helpful. Not running too fast at the beginning of a race is a real challenge for me though. It stems from my cross-country days. My coach trained us to run the first 400-800 meters of a race as a sprint. In cross-country, the start is like a funnel. If you don't get out fast, you'll be stuck. Road races are just different (and most of the races I run now are longer than a 5K)...Anyway, I wonder if the music helps keep my heart rate down?
• 144 is my body's favorite training heart rate. I've run several runs from 6 miles - 13 miles at many different paces from 7:45 pace to 9:15 pace that all had an average heart rate of 144. The pace is faster or slower depending on how I feel, but my body seems to settle right at 144.
  
• For the half, I think I'll aim for a heart rate in the 150-160 range for the first half of the race. Then ignore the monitor and just run by feel for the rest of the race.
  
• My mom is running the half too, but as a training run. She'll be running the Hyannis Marathon the next week. Her training has been phenomenal. She did a 22 mile run last week, and she's still feeling strong. She's a little nervous though. Her long runs have been on the treadmill because of all the snow. She's thinks that might be bad. I say if she can stand running a bunch of 20-22 milers on the treadmill, then she's ready for anything. What do you guys think? Do you think long runs on the treadmill are a detriment to marathon training? Have any of you had to do a training cycle on the treadmill? I'm sure she'd love to read about others' experiences (and so would I)!
• Here's a random photo of my little ladies taken with my new favorite iPhone app (Hipstamatic).
  
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The new year is challenging me

In my last post, I wrote that I was on the road to recovery. Well, I wasn't. A few days later I developed a hacking cough. One of those that keeps you up for hours at night. Kaylee developed her first ever ear infection and Emily croup. It has been a tough winter for us. The kids recovered fast, but Emily's sleeping pattern devolved into this wake up every half hour for mommy thing that was killing me. And I had that terrible cough for a little over two weeks. So even when Emily gave me a two hour respite, I wasn't sleeping, I was coughing.

Things are better...I think. I'm not coughing. Emily is sleeping again. Kaylee is happy. Yet, we seem to be fighting off yet another cold virus, but right now it's all sniffles and not much else.

My running has simply been all over the place. During the whole mastitis episode, I took 12 days off. Then with the coughing thing I took off another 6 days. Finally, I just starting running really easy. "Really easy" was making sure my heart rate stayed between 140 - 150, which was 9:30 pace at the time. My heart rate has been so high. Usually before I start running, my heart rate is around 50. While I was sick, it was between 80 - 90 (that's before the running even started). Just crazy!

I'm concerned that I won't run my half marathon well, but what can I do? It's not like I can cram training, and I don't have a lot of control over being sick. I did manage a 13 miler last week at 8:38 pace with an average heart rate of 142. A couple days ago I ran an 11 miler at 7:49 pace with an average heart rate of 144, which sounds good, but it felt harder to me than 144 should feel. Today I ran a 7 miler at 7:19 pace, but I forgot my heart rate monitor. It felt fairly hard though. I really have no idea what I'm in for with this half marathon, but I'll be there ready to find out. When I reminded Nick that I had a half soon he responded with "you're still running it?" To which I replied, "of course!" It might not be pretty, but it's still worth the run...

Oh I had a question for those of you who use heart rate zones to train. I've sort of figured out my "zones," which are as follows:

• Zone 3: 134 - 152
• Zone 4: 152 - 169
• Zone 5: 169 - 187

My question is: what zone should you be in when running a half? I'm guessing zone 4? And what zone should you run a full?