Willie McCool Memorial Half Marathon.

Okay, so my blog has been dead for about 6 months.  Sorry.  I did work up a race report from my last half marathon to post on one of the running forums that I frequent though, so I thought I would share it here as well.

This was my 3rd half marathon that I've run.

The race was set to start at 8:00 AM and it was about a 25 minute drive from my house so I had my alarm set for 6:30.  Woke up before the alarm, dressed in the clothes I had set out the night before, toasted a bagel and put honey and peanut butter on it, grabbed a banana and a diet coke and out the door.

Weather was good, 50 degrees at the start increasing to about 60 degrees at my anticipated finish time, wind not terrible at 12 mph out of the west.

Got there plenty early, parked, checked out the start/finish areas, did a 1.5 mile warmup at a nice slow jog and got to the starting line about 10 minutes before the start.  My heart rate monitor wasn't working so I started fiddling with it and listening to the race director giving the last minute instructions.

After 10 minutes of fiddling, my HRM was still not working and then the gun goes off and the race is started.  I get going at a nice easy pace, I recognized a couple other runners from the running club and it was nice to know they were about the same pace as me so I just kind of fell in with them at the start.  We ran around a circle and as we come out of the circle, we are supposed to follow a service type road along the airport perimeter.  There were a couple of bicycles leading the race and they went straight instead of making the turn.  The first 20 or 30 runners are following them.  A lady comes running over pointing to us saying that they are going the wrong way and that we need to follow the correct course so we make the turn.  About 100' farther a guy comes running over screaming at us that we are going the wrong way and that we need to follow the rest of the runners who are following the bicycles so our little pack makes a quick turn and runs after the leaders.

I was pretty confident that we weren't following the correct course (I knew it wasn't the course map that was posted online), but they had mentioned getting the course certified and I hadn't ever actually looked at the certified course so thought maybe it was short so they had changed this part at the start.  We end up running on the interstate access road and traffic isn't terrible, but not closed off by any means and we had been instructed to run on the right side of the road, but with traffic merging onto the interstate, we all ended up moving over to the left to keep from getting hit or playing chicken with large moving vehicles.  About that time we looked over and noticed that a large group of runners is running parallel to us on the service type road along the airport perimeter that was the original course map online.  At some point 20 or 30 runners behind us they had evidently quit having the runners follow the bicycles and run the correct route instead.  Pretty disheartening to see a large group of runners that had started behind you and that were running slower than you already ahead of you because you took the long cut (opposite of short cut) at the direction of the race officials.  We get to the next intersection and turn back toward the correct course.  Several of the group that was behind us are now in front of us already and we still have about 100 yards to go to get to where they are turning.  Probably 40 or 50 people who started behind us, and are running slower than us, are now in front of us because we ended up running .22 miles extra right there at the start.  VERY frustrating!

Oh well, still a long way to go and now I can focus on the fact that my HRM isn't working so I can freak out about that a little.  I felt pretty good about my pacing and was falling right in at a 8:10 pace which was my target and feeling pretty good so I figured I would be okay without the HRM.  It isn't a complete crutch for me, but I do use it to reassure myself of where I'm at and how I'm doing during a race.

This stretch was with the wind and in retrospect I could have probably pushed it a little more here, but at the time I was trying to be conservative especially with my HRM on the blink.  Splits were running right around 8:10, feeling relaxed, just focusing on running smooth and staying hydrated.

Just before mile 4 we turned back into the wind and it wasn't bad, but it took noticeably more effort for sure.  I tried to just hang back and draft behind some other runners, but they kept slowing down and I was getting down close to an 8:45 pace and knew I needed to break out and go on my own so I did.  The next 5 miles were mostly into the wind with a little jog south and then back north to break it up and I ended up averaging about an 8:25 pace through there.  Took a GU before the mile 7 water stop just to practice for my marathon coming up.  Seemed to work fine.  With the extra bit at the start and this stretch into the wind, I pretty much realized I wasn't going to make my A goal of 1:46:59, I still felt like I was giving it the right amount of effort, but this is where having a working HRM would have really helped me zero in on the correct level of effort.

At mile 9 we turned back to the North and the forecast had predicted the wind shifting to the southwest, so I was expecting to get a little boost, but was surprised to find out that the wind was northwest instead and so I was still pushing into it.  Another mile slower than I wanted at a 8:23 pace for mile 10.   They had water stops every mile or so and I was drinking a cup and pouring a cup on me by this time.  It was only 60 degrees, but being a big guy I tend to overheat pretty easy so I'm always battling that.  I do need to remember that I don't have to drink the entire cup of water every time, by about mile 10 I was getting a little water logged and would have probably been better off only drinking about a 1/2 cup at each stop.

At mile 11 we turned back to the east and did get the wind behind us.  8:02 for mile 11 and 8:12 for mile 12, feeling pretty decent still, but not sure I have enough left to really push it in for the next 1.? miles.  Make the last turn right just after the 12 mile mark and realize the wind has shifted even more from the north and for sure is a net headwind more than a crosswind.  At the time I felt like I was pushing it in, but mile 13 shows a 8:27 avg pace so in fact I actually slowed down.  At about mile 13.1 we turned one last time and did have the wind at our back going into the finish.  Pretty discouraged at this point, not really even paying attention to time or anything, just working at getting to the finish line.

My wife and son were there to cheer me on at the finish and my wife took a couple pictures that I'll throw in here.

Here's me coming toward the finish.  The flags are an good indicator of the wind here.  Too bad this was only about the last 1/4 mile of the race in this direction!

My son decided to run that last 1/4 mile or so with me and that was really neat.  He was struggling toward the end though so I didn't sprint toward the finish line like I normally would and it ended up costing me that sub 1:50 mark this time.  It was still worth it to run that last little bit with him.

Here were are crossing the finish line.  My son was running right beside me then moved off to the left because he didn't want to get in trouble for crossing the finish line with me.  I told him I would have loved him to cross the finish line with me, but he didn't know it was okay at the time.

You can see him ducking out of the way on the left.  Also not sure how I ended up with a 1:50:05 gun time looking at this picture I would think it would be closer to 1:50:10 or something like that, but with the fiasco that was the start, I'm taking every second they give me.   I went back and added the time up that I spent running directly off course for the .22 miles at the start and it was 1:35, so I would have run a correct length half marathon in 1:48:29.  Oh well, I guess this will make me keep training and put a goal for me to beat sometime this fall or next winter.

Here we are at the other side of the finish line.  He's looking out for me showing me where the donuts and chocolate milk are.  Something tells me that he was looking out for himself as well because I ended up sharing with him.  

Back at the house after the race with my race shirt and finisher medal.

That's about it I guess.  Still sticking with my plan on my marathon.  Got in 6 miles on the treadmill last night and have 8 on the agenda today, so no break after the race Saturday.  I'm actually feeling pretty good with no nagging aches or pains from the race.

Here's my splits.  The first mile is wrong because I didn't get my GPS started for about 100 yards or so.  I went back and corrected it to the right starting line, but that ended up showing the pace too fast.  It was really right around an 8:00 pace on the first mile.

Splits (GPS Interval)
	Type	Distance	Duration	Total Duration	Pace	Avg HR	Max HR	Notes
1	Manual	1 mi	7:28.07	7:28.07	7:29
2	Manual	1 mi	8:10.14	15:38.21	8:11
3	Manual	1 mi	8:06.62	23:44.83	8:07
4	Manual	1 mi	8:10.64	31:55.47	8:11
5	Manual	1 mi	8:27.58	40:23.05	8:28
6	Manual	1 mi	8:25.57	48:48.62	8:26
7	Manual	1 mi	8:23.25	57:11.87	8:24
8	Manual	1 mi	8:18.19	1:05:30.06	8:19
9	Manual	1 mi	8:23.79	1:13:53.85	8:24
10	Manual	1 mi	8:26.98	1:22:20.83	8:27
11	Manual	1 mi	8:01.13	1:30:21.96	8:02
12	Manual	1 mi	8:11.42	1:38:33.38	8:12
13	Manual	1 mi	8:26.08	1:46:59.46	8:27
14	Manual	0.37 mi	3:03.53	1:50:02.99	8:17

I'll try to start posting more regularly, but at least this brings this back from the dead for now.

Nathan

Make A Wish 5K Race

Well, I'm doing the running thing.  So far in 2012 I've run 1,116.8 miles according to my running log.  I'm afraid that at some point in here my running has gone from being done to get in shape for hunting to running to get better at running!

I had a couple goals for this fall and one was to run a 10K race in under 50 minutes and the other was to run a 5K race in under 24 minutes.  I was able to make the 10K goal back in September when I ran the Shallowater Stampede 10K in 49:18.  That's an average pace of 7:56 per mile which is WAY faster than I would have ever dreamed I would be able to run 6.2 miles at even a year ago. 

There are all kinds of running calculators on the Internet and plugging my 10K time into them made it seem like I should be able to run a 23:45 5K based on that race so I felt pretty confident that I would make that.  Too confident it turned out!  After some posts on the Internet I even thought I might have a chance to run a 22:00 5K which sounds crazy fast to me.  So we signed up for the next 5K which was the Red Raider Road Race which is one of the biggest races of the year for the running club and I did some speed training and showed up expecting to nail it.  I did have some allergy issues and was taking antihistamines though, so that had me a little worried.  Race morning was pretty decent temperature wise, but we had a pretty good wind going about 20 mph that wasn't looking to great.  I warmed up and was ready to go, the gun went off and so did I.  The first mile was a 6:55 split which was what the running calculators said was the pace I should be able to run a mile at IF I was only running a mile!  But I still had 2.1 miles to go.  I slowed down to a 7:25 pace on mile 2 and completely blew up on mile 3 slowing down to an 8:15 pace.  I finished the race with a 24:06 time and missed my goal. 

So that brings us to the Make A Wish 5K race!  I couldn't let that disappointing race result sit with me any longer than I had to and I found another 5K on the calendar just two weeks away.  I did some more 5K specific training and felt like I really could get close to a 23:00 5K based on my training times.  The big thing I learned from the previous race was that if you go out too fast you will pay for it in spades.  I couldn't believe how slow I got on that last mile and I really was giving it everything I had.

They had a costume themed race and our family decided to dress up as hunters.  Not too big of a stretch for us!

Cathy and Eli ran the 1 mile run/walk and Eli got 1st place!  The course was a tiny bit under a mile and Eli finished it in 9:38!  He ran nearly the entire way.  Of course we won't mention that the race was a little unorganized and the fastest 3 runners in the 1 mile ended up going out much farther than they were supposed too, but Eli did still cross the finish line first.  Maybe we'll make a runner out of him yet. 

It was a brisk morning with the temperature at 38 degrees at the start, but it was sunny and only a light breeze at 7 mph so it really wasn't too bad.  In fact, that is about perfect conditions for a fat boy like me who needs some help dissipating heat that I build up on a run!

It was a very small race, less than 100 total runners with most of those in the 1 mile Run/Walk. The 5K had about 30 and the 10K had about 15. Got in a good warm up, but the race started almost 10 minutes late so was getting a little anxious by the time it finally started.

We finally got lined up and I was right on the front line. They gave us some last minute instructions and blew a whistle and we were off. Had a nice little group of about 5 of us that settled in right at the start with a couple 10K runners pulling out in front of everyone. Our friend Larry was running with me and I had my phone set to give me audio cues every minute so I was NOT going to go out too fast and blow up this time.

One minute in and my phone tells me I'm running a 7:03 pace, I didn't feel that at all so I just kept the same pace and tried to run smooth. Two minutes in and my phone again tells me I'm running a 7:03 pace and this time I believe it and slow down just a little. Next minute clicks off and I'm down to a 7:15 pace, another minute and I'm down to a 7:20 pace and that's where I wanted to keep it for the rest of the race.

Kept it real steady and Larry just hung with me and the pack just kind of stuck around. At one point we were actually leading the 5K! At about 2 miles in a couple of high school cross country girls went ahead of us and another guy a little younger than me pulled ahead. I was staying really consistent and was afraid to blow up like last time so I just let them go. At 2.25 miles I could tell my buddy wanted to go win the 5K and if we waited much longer the 3 ahead of us might pull away so I told him to go. It was getting harder, but I still felt WAY better than I did two weeks ago when I blew up. What little breeze there was was behind us so I felt like I had 24:00 in the bag for sure. He took off and left everyone so it was the two girls and the 35ish guy in front of me. They ended up about 50 yards ahead of me and then either they slowed down or I picked it up slightly or probably a little of both because it stayed that way to about 2.75 miles.

The way the course was laid out you couldn't actually see the finish line until you made one last turn, and I was still worried about blowing up like last time so I didn't start picking up the pace until about 200 yards to go. In retrospect I should have picked it up at least 400 yards out and I really think I might could have caught up with the guy in front of me as I felt great going across the finish line. Still, I was VERY happy with my time as I smoked my original 24:00 goal and beat my 23:00 fairly well.

Here's a couple pictures Cathy took as I was approaching the finish.  Here's where I should have already been kicking to try to catch the guy in front of me.

Here's a closer up picture of me.  I'm going to have to start admitting that not only am I nearly completely gray, but I'm going bald as well!

A couple more pictures of the finish.  I'm still a little upset with myself for not catching this guy in front of me.  They split the age divisions into 30 and under and 30 and over since it was such a small race and turns out he was the first place finisher for the 30 and over Male.  I took 2nd.  I was running more to get my time than to win a race as I just never would have dreamed I would have a chance of actually winning my age group.

Here's me going across the finish line.   The clock shows 22:34 and it looks like I'm only a couple steps from the finish so you would think I would have ended up with a 22:35 or maybe 22:36, but they have me down as 22:39 for my official time.  Still a very good time for me.  Eli was chasing after me to congratulate me as soon as I crossed the finish line.

If you are interested in the details, here's my splits with HR info.

Distance Duration Total Duration Pace Avg HR Max HR

1 mi        7:20.59    7:20.59         7:21   164        181
1 mi        7:18.88   14:39.47        7:19   177        182
1 mi        7:12.52   21:51.99        7:13   180        183
0.12 mi        0:48   22:39.99        6:40   181        183

I don't know how to really analyze these numbers, I didn't even get close to my Max HR of 194 at the end of the run so I think that means that I should have kicked much earlier. I think my avg HR being at 177 (91%) for the 2nd mile and 180 (93%) for the 3rd mile means I was not going to be able to keep that pace much longer though. Also not sure if the low temperature helped keep my HR low also.

I felt MUCH better than I did at the end of my 5K two weeks ago that I ran a 24:06 on. A little sore in my quads, but not just beat down like I did after the last one.

Pacing was just about perfect when it is all said and done I think. Should have kicked a little earlier, but I was so worried about blowing up after the last race I was too conservative at the end.

Oh well, it's been a while since I posted and I thought I would update things.  I have another half marathon scheduled for two weeks from now, but I'm not going to stress about getting a specific goal time on it.  It's a tough course and I'll just be happy to finish under 2 hours which should be pretty easy, but you never know until the day of the race. 

That's it for now.  Nathan

2012 Wyoming Antelope Hunt

Way behind on my blog, maybe one of these days I'll go back and try to get it caught up.

In the meantime I figured I would post on my latest hunting adventure in the meantime.

We had some prior commitments and had to miss opening morning, but we got there about 10 am Sunday morning and saw antelope alongside the highway on public land on our unit before we even got to where we were going to drop our travel trailer off. Stopped a couple times on the side of the road and glassed, but nothing too exciting so we just kept going to get the trailer parked.

One thing for sure, there were plenty of antelope in the unit. Even getting the trailer unhitched there was a herd of 15 or so antelope just over the fence on private property. We drove around for 3 hours on 2 track roads and saw probably 100 antelope and 15 or 20 bucks. One thing that really surprised me was that they didn't seem very skittish at all. I had 2 average sized bucks about 12"ers stand and look at us with the truck stopped from less than 100 yards away. Saw one prospect buck but it was probably 1,000 yards away and pushing a doe but with the boys and the wife with me I decided not to go after him and he was heading away from us anyway at a pretty good clip.

Ended up on one 2 track road that was marked on the maps and the gps, but not very well marked on the ground at all. The wife didn't enjoy that part much at all. The boys really had a hard time understanding why I wasn't shooting the antelope we were seeing and I kept telling them I was looking for a bigger buck, and after passing on about the 10th buck they seemed to lose interest and after some back seat whining they ended up playing video games instead of helping me look for antelope.

We got out to a main road finally and headed back to where the trailer was parked. I bet we saw another 100 antelope on the way there and a couple slightly nicer bucks. Most of those were on private land, but if I had seen a really nice one I was thinking I could watch them and see if they decided to venture onto the public land across the road.

We got back to the trailer and hung out a little bit while we figured what to do. They were ready to go visit our friends in Powell, and they were running late so we ended up heading up to meet them and swap stuff out. My friend Mike was coming to hunt with me the next few days while the boys and my wife were going to hang out at their house in Powell.

On the way over a couple of game wardens were checking folks. We didn't have anything to check, but we talked about 10 or 15 minutes and they were very helpful. One of them said that this was his unit and he had done the counts in August and that there weren't very many large bucks due to the drought conditions that they had this year. He said they had only checked one really good buck, but most of what they were seeing were 12" and under with a smattering of 13" and 14"ers. I was starting to second guess passing on some of the bucks we had seen earlier now, especially since it would have been neat to share that with the boys.

We swapped everything out and headed back to the unit about 5:00. The thought process was to head back to the eastern side of the unit and see if anything jumped out at us. The light was very odd for the time of day as a front was coming in and it was overcast, plus the smoke in the air from the fires almost made it seem like twilight, but it was still well over an hour before sunset.

Getting back to the unit we saw one good buck almost in the city limits of Shoshoni well onto private land and several other bucks that were all that average 12" or so. We went by several groups of antelope off of the highway on public land but nothing to get excited about. We ran out of public land along the highway and it was starting to get closer to actual sunset so we took off on a nice gravel road going north off the highway.

The crazy thing was that the nice gravel road wasn't on the map, although we had been on some terrible 2 track roads that were on the map. Sure enough a few miles later and we were dead ended at a gas well pad. Oh well, we backtracked and ended up on another 2 track road that was on the map and headed east. Sun was setting now and we were several miles in on the 2 track and had several more miles to get out and we tried to decide what to do. We ended up crossing some private land and checking out some public on the other side of it and it was getting close to dark now. We'd seen several more antelope, but again, nothing exciting. We had maybe 10 or 15 minutes left before dark and we decided to just head back to the highway. We turned around and hadn't gone more than 1/4 mile and a buck and 2 does popped up onto the ridge we were on from the bottom in front of us.

We stopped and checked them out and the buck was decent. After talking with the game warden at the check point, I was starting to think my standards might be set a little too high, I was looking for a monster and this buck wasn't a monster. I got out of the truck and actually chambered a round for the first time that day and walked up a little way to check him out. He saw us and looked at us, but didn't seem too concerned even though we were only 250 yards away. I glassed him some more and debated and decided not to shoot. They ended up trotting off in the direction we were headed and then stopped about 400 yards away just a few feet off the 2 track. Walking back to the truck I was still second guessing myself. This buck was tall and had good mass, just not very good cutters, he was obviously a mature buck and the best one I'd seen all day and I'd seen 25 or 30 bucks that day. I told my buddy that if we drove up there to within 100 yards and that buck was still there I would shoot him. We got in the truck and drove toward them and stopped at 100 yards away or so and he was just standing there with his does. I got out and set up and he starts walking toward us. No idea why, but I guess this buck just had a death wish. He angles a little bit sideways so he is quartering to me and I punched a hole in him with my 7 mag. He wheeled around and ran about 20 yards and then went down.

Walking up to him there wasn't any ground shrinkage. I had guessed him at around 14" and decent mass and he was every bit of that. Here's the glory shots.

He had a really dark face and nice cape. Ended up measuring him out at 15" on the right side and 15 1/2" on the left side with 6 5/8" bases. Cutters obviously the weakest feature at 4 4/8" on the right and 4 2/8" on the left. Green gross score was 78 1/8". 

Not a monster, but I'm happy with him. Looking at his jawbone, his teeth were worn almost to the gumline so he was for sure a mature buck. Not sure how he got that old as stupid as he was acting, but love will make a fellow do some pretty stupid things I guess. 

Have him caped out and in the freezer, planning on getting a shoulder mount done on him when I get home.

That's it for the first part of my hunt. Heading west now to chase some Wapiti on my general tag.

Nathan

Levelland Lope

Way behind on posting.  This one will be a short one so I'll just get it done.

Cathy and I ran in the Levelland Lope 10K run this past Saturday.  This was my first 10K ever so no matter what it was going to be a personal record for me.  In the past a 10K has always been way too long of a run for me to even think about trying to run one, but after the last year and a half marathon under my belt, a 10K seemed pretty short.

I really didn't have any expectations for how I was going to do, I've been working on my low heart rate training and wasn't even sure if I was going run in a race or not this summer, but the running club races are only $5 to enter so I figured I might as well get a few of them in.  Based on my half marathon time, the online running calculators were saying I should be able to run a 52 minute 10K, but that doesn't take into account that my half marathon was run under near perfect weather conditions and on a Saturday in June in West Texas the only thing for sure was that the weather conditions would not be near perfect.

The course was pretty flat and the weather wasn't terrible though, so I was hoping to finish somewhere around that mark.  Race morning broke with the temperature at 65 degrees with 90% humidity and a 15 mph South wind.  Not a very big crowd for this race as it was a 30 mile drive from Lubbock, but we had a decent start.  Here we are at the start, I'm 205 and Cathy is just behind me wearing bib 204.  I forget that I'm a little different body type than your average runner until I look through pictures of the start of some of these races. 

Pacing was pretty good for the first 4 miles.  My splits were 8:30, 8:18, 8:32 & 8:37, but at about the 4.2 mile mark the course turned back into the wind and it felt like it had picked up some from earlier and mile 5 clocked in at a 9:12 pace and mile 6 was a 8:49 pace with about 1/4 mile of that into the wind as well.  My heart rate was pretty good throughout and I didn't feel like I was really going all out or anything, I pushed in the last .2 miles with a 7:38 pace and was clicking along at a 6:30 pace right there at the end. The club photographer was taking pictures right around the 6 mile mark and I was still feeling good enough to give a thumbs up as I ran by.

Cathy lost her hair band in the wind coming back so I couldn't get approval to post her picture with her hair flying in her face, but she wasn't too far behind me and had a smile on her face as well.

I ended up finishing in 54:12 for an official pace of 8:45 per mile, and Cathy ended up with a 56:26 for a 9:06 pace.  Our friend Larry finished 3rd overall with a 38:15 time and an average pace of 6:10 per mile!

We had a good time and it was nice to get a race in.  I'm back on my heart rate shuffle and it's not looking like the race had any negative affect on my base building work so that's good too.  I ran the 6 mile route at the house yesterday in 1:06:04 for an average pace of 10:54 per mile and an average heart rate of 137 bpm so that is my fastest MAF run yet.  It probably didn't hurt that I spend the first part of the week at 7,000' elevation and then came back and ran at 3,000' the next morning though. 

I need to get some other posts done soon, but at least this one is fairly current. 

Nathan

Still running....

Well, I was doing good there on posting for a little while and have fallen off again.  I'm still running although I don't really have a new goal set yet to train for. 

I've been doing a lot of reading on running and I'm starting to work on building my aerobic base using a method designed by Phil Maffetone.  It's pretty simple, you take your age away from 180 and that's the heart rate that he thinks you should be doing most of your base training at.  When I first got my heart rate monitor back at the end of December, I did some calculations and came up with 149 bpm as my "easy" heart rate that I was training at.  This takes it even lower as 180 - 44 = 136 bpm, also referred to a my MAF.  I had just gotten to where I was able to jog at about a 10 minute per mile pace at a heart rate of 149 bpm, and then I end up deciding to slow down to 136 bpm which put me all the way back to the paces that I was running in early January, around 11:20 - 11:30 per mile.  The difference is that at this new heart rate I'm supposedly building my aerobic engine even stronger with even less chance for injury from overtraining.

I've only been working on it for a couple weeks now so not much of a chance to see much improvement, especially as the temperatures are climbing, but it should be interesting to see as the summer goes on if I can bring my pace at MAF down to 10:30 or 10:00 per mile, a general rule of thumb is that you should be able to race shorter distances (10K, etc.) as much as 1:30 to 2:00 per mile faster than what your MAF is.  So if I'm running a 10:00 mile with my heart rate at 136 bpm, then the theory is that with a little speed work before getting back to racing that I might be able to run as fast as 8:00 per mile in a race allowing my heart rate to climb as high as I can stand.  In my last 11 mile race, I ran the last 7 miles with my heart rate at or above 180 bpm so I should have quite a bit of buffer to give up when I start running hard.  Of course this is all theory and each person is going to have different abilities and reaction to picking up the pace, but my goal is basically to get faster by running slower.  Seems counter intuitive, but we'll see if it pans out.

I did run the Horseshoe Bend race put on by the West Texas Running Club a couple weeks ago.  The start/finish line is only about a mile from our house and I've always wanted to run in it, but never been in even close to good enough shape to attempt it before.  It was just a couple weeks after my half marathon and I didn't do any specific training for it, but I finished it in 1:41:53 for a 9:16 avg pace and was pretty happy with that.  It was actually slower per mile than my half marathon time, but the course was harder and I hadn't realized how much of a boost the thousands of cheering fans along the course gave me in the half marathon race.  On this course there was 7 folks cheering us on over the course of the 11 miles and they were all volunteers working the water stations.  Quite a difference from a couple weeks earlier with bands, cheerleader squads and literally thousands of folks cheering for you.

I'm up to 476.1 miles of running and 78.8 miles on the elliptical for a total of 554.9 miles so far in 2012 so I'm on pace for over 100 miles a month so far.  I've already gotten more miles in 2012 than I did in 2011 for the entire year and that was the most miles I'd ever run in my life so I'm feeling like I am getting in pretty good shape.  I've lost a little over 20 pounds in the last year and would like to lose 15 more this year if I can watch my diet a bit.

That's pretty much what I've been doing lately.  Work is slowing down and I'm trying to get a few other things done as well.  Still working with our new puppy on retrieving and obedience, but need to start spending more time on that as well.  Seems like time is at a premium all the time anymore.

With that said I guess I better get back to something productive.

Have a great day!  Nathan

My first half marathon!

After worrying about it for the last month or so, race day came around with perfect weather and everything went super smoothly!

We stayed in a hotel downtown within walking distance from the starting line and woke up and walked the 1/2 mile or so and were at the starting line about 30 minutes early.  It rained overnight but cleared up and the temperature was in the low 50's with a light east wind.

There were TONS of people!!!  The race was capped at 18,000 entrants and hit the max a week or so before the race.  The biggest race I'd ever run in before was around 300 people so it was amazing to see all the people.

Here's my view of the starting line.

Here's the view behind me at the starting line.  It looked to me that the crowd stretched on for about a half mile.

The gun went off and we crossed the starting line about 5 minutes later.  I had located the 4:00 pace group for the marathon and my plan was to try to hang with them for the first 8 miles until the marathon split off, but I ended up getting about 400 yards behind them by the time the runners stretched out getting started.  I was wearing my heart rate monitor and wearing my bluetooth headset in one ear, but I just had it set to give me my audio cues on pace and heart rate, I wasn't listening to any music.  I got a little concerned when I started out, because the audio didn't start out working, but it worked at the first 1/2 mile mark.  I was right on a 9:10 pace so that seemed perfect where I wanted to be.  I wasn't making much progress on catching up to the pace group though so I tried to pick it up just a little.  The 1 mile mark rolled around and my audio cue matched up just right with the mile marker and I was starting to catch up to the pace group.  My split for the first mile was 9:05 and my heart rate was at 164 which was a little higher than I expected so soon, but nothing terrible yet.

I kept after the pace group and caught them somewhere in the next 1/2 mile or so.  My 2 mile split was a little fast catching up to the group at 8:41, heart rate was up to 168, not bad but I was hoping it wouldn't keep climbing that fast.  I hung with the pace group pretty much for the next 6 miles.  They must have been planning on running a little faster than the 9:09 that would get them in at 4:00 on the dot because the splits ran closer to 9:00.  Mile 3 was a 8:54 split and my heart rate was up to 170.  A little higher than I was hoping this early, but I was hanging with the pace group though and didn't want to slow up.  Mile 4 split was a 9:06 and my heart rate actually dropped down to 167 so that was pretty encouraging.  Mile 5 was another 8:54 split and my heart rate was still dropping down to 164 at the end of mile 5.  I was feeling really good and the miles were flying by.  Some clouds had rolled in and the already perfect weather even got better.

I'm still not sure what happened on Mile 6.  My pace blew up to 9:25 for that split, but my heart rate was still dropping, down to 163 at the end of mile 6.  We ran through a park there with some turns, but no idea on the pace.  I think I had a crowded water stop in there, but I don't really remember.  Mile 6 was where I stopped to walk for the first time in my 15K race two weeks ago with my heart rate pegged up in the 180's and I was running faster today and my heart rate was over 15 beats lower this time!  Mile 7 split was back down to an 8:53 and my heart rate was back up to 167 which was pretty good for this far into the race.  I was expecting it to be in the low 170's for sure by this time.  Mile 8 went through Churchill Downs which was neat, but the pack was till pretty crowded at this point and there were several narrow spots that really tightened things up.  My split for mile 8 was an 8:49 and my heart rate was back to 170.  I pulled my phone out and took a picture as we ran through in front of the grand stands, but didn't take any pictures of the horses working out on the track.

After Churchill Downs the marathoners split off and my pace group went with them.  I was feeling really good and my overall pace was still under 9:00 so I decided to just try to keep that going for a while and see where it got me.  Mile 9 split was 8:55 and my heart rate was up to 173.  Still not bad at all.  Mile 10 split was 8:47 and my heart rate finally got into the upper 170's with a 177 at the end of mile 10.  I was still feeling pretty good and just had a 5K left to go so I decided to see if I could pick it up just a little bit.  Mile 11 split was 8:28 and my heart rate finally hit 180.  On my 15K race two weeks earlier it had hit 180 within the first 2 miles!  Amazing what some tapering and some cool weather can do!  I tried to keep that pace and Mile 12 split was 8:24, my heart rate was climbing a bit now, hitting 186 by the end of mile 12.  The crowd was really great the last mile or so (they had been really good the whole way though) and I started passing people like crazy.  I was feeling really good, but knew I still had plenty left in the tank.  I wasn't really paying attention to my splits or time by this time, I was way ahead of my goal by then and just wanting to give it my best shot for the last 1.1 miles.  I was shocked after the race looking at my splits to find out that Mile 13's split was 7:43!  I don't know if I've run a mile in 7:43 anytime in the last 10 years or more.  My heart rate at the end of mile 13 was 187 so I guess I was putting out the effort by this time anyway.  The split on my phone shows 8:08 for the last .1 miles, but I forgot to stop my phone when I crossed the finish line and my phone showed 12 seconds more than the timing chip for my overall time.  My heart rate was 190 at the finish which is right at my max.  My phone also showed 13.23 miles instead of 13.1 miles, but if you do the math based on my official time of 1:55:43 for 13.1 miles that comes out to an average pace of 8:50 which is WAY better than I was hoping for.

Did I mention that the weather was AWESOME!  I still ended up getting plenty warm and dumped water over my head at 3 of the last 4 water stops.  I went through most of the water stops and drank powerade at 3 of the stops as well.  The course seemed pretty flat to me, but my phone showed 579' of total elevation gain over the entire course, which was more than I would have expected.

I think this turned out to be a perfect first half marathon for me.  The crowd was great, plenty of runners but not too many, weather was PERFECT, course was pretty easy, everything was great.  My wife started with me, but she hurt her leg playing volleyball a month or so ago and was just getting back up to speed so she only ran about the first couple hundred yards with me before slowing down.  She ran a 2:10:15 which was pretty good for as little as she has been able to run the last month.

The race seemed very well organized to me as a first timer and everything went super smooth.  I felt great at the finish and feel like I probably left something out there in the middle of the race.  My avg heart rate was 169 which is lower than some of my training runs.  Did I mention that the weather was PERFECT?

Today was my wife Cathy's birthday and she said the best present she's had in a long time was seeing the smile on my face when I told her that I had made my time.  Kinda hokey, but that's what she said.  She's been running marathons and half marathons for over 15 years so she's excited that I was running my first with her.  Here's a picture of Cathy and I after the finish. 

Here we are in our finisher shirts after we cleaned up some.

I'm sure I've missed some of the details, but I had a great race and it was a great day.  Hopefully it will be the first of many.   I finished 2,540 out of 12,104 overall, 1,751 out of 5,165 males and 264 out of 745 in my age group. 

That's it for now.  Nathan

Race for the Arts

Saturday was race day for Eli and I.  He ran in his first kids fun run and I ran in a 15K (9.3 miles) as a final tune up for my half marathon coming up in a couple weeks now.

Eli was pretty excited for his first race.  We had run/walked a mile at the house a couple times over the last couple weeks and he was ready to go.

He got to meet Raider Red before the race started.

There were 90 kids that ran in the kids fun run, but at least half of them had parents running with them so there was quite a crowd at the start.

And their off!  It was an all out sprint at the start.  Eli got caught up in the excitement and took off and left Cathy in the dust!  He was SO excited, he was just beaming!

After the fast start things slowed down quite a bit.  Eli would run a while then walk a while but he still had enough energy to come up with his own obstacle course on the route.

The excitement was back to a fever pitch at the finish and he managed to sprint in the last few yards.

There was quite a crowd cheering them on.

All the kids that finished got a medal.  He was pretty pumped.

Not sure anyone wants to see any pictures of me after all those pictures of such a cute kid, but Cathy took some pictures of me running my race as well.  They started the 2 mile and 15K together so there was almost 300 runners at the start.  I started at the back of the pack with the other slow movers.

Running on the brick streets down Broadway.

Here's me at about the 5 mile mark.  About half those women behind me in this picture ended up passing me when I blew up at the 6 mile mark.

Almost there!  Eli cheering me on at the 9 mile mark!

And the finish.  I ended up coming in about 4 minutes slower than I was hoping for. 

Lots of lessons learned and it was a pretty warm morning and the 20-25mph winds didn't help a whole lot.  Hopefully I'll be able to get closer to my goal coming up in a couple weeks at the half marathon.

Eli and I both ended up getting medals!  I'm sure glad the West Texas Running club has a Clydesdale (AKA Fat Boy) division so I actually have a chance of competing.  If I had to run against all the skinny little guys in my age division I wouldn't stand a chance!

If anyone is intersted in the specifics I think I have set up that activity as a publicly viewable page on my runkeeper program.  It shows my pace each mile, heart rate, map, and other fun stuff.

Here's the link - http://runkeeper.com/user/npaden/activity/81529336

That's it for now.  I'm hoping for cooler weather for my half marathon, that's for sure!

Nathan