15K Race Report

Ran the 15km Midummer Night's run last night. This is the 2nd time they've put on this race, but it's the first time they've offered a 15km race option. I did the 30km race last year. As a returning participant, I received a bonus gift consisting of a little pin engraved with the total number of km that I will have run as part of the event (ie. 30+15 = 45km).

This race was my first scheduled tune-up race in prep for a fall marathon. I was nervous since this was the first real opportunity to see how far along my marathon training has gone towards the quest for a BQ time. I've run a whole bunch of races this year but most of them were done with a very specific training purpose in mind and the ones I tried to go all out on earlier in the year (this 5k and this 10k) had less then stellar results.

I carboloaded for this by eating two plates of pasta for breakfast. I did this last year and it worked well so i did it again. It did feel weird to be cooking and eating spaghetti at 8am in the morning though. I arrived about an hour before the start and wondered around a bit chatting with some people from Running Mania that I've met in the past. I was diligently trying to stretch the muscles around my left knee since I was going to be running without my brace and I wasn't sure how the increased pace for an extended period of time was going to effect it. After stretching, I bumped into Yumke who was doing this race as a training run and after talking for a bit we proceeded to the start line.

As for the race itself, it went surprisingly well. I always start out races too fast and this one was no exception. I was trying to target between 4:15 and 4:20 per km (6:50 to 7:00 min/miles) since that is basically where my tempo runs "should" be and Pfitz says LT paces are between 15k and half marathon pace. I hit the first km at 4:01 and cursed myself under my breath for basically doing 5km pace for the first km. At this point, the field had separated quite a bit. There were a bunch of speedy people that were well in front of me and there really wasn't anyone around me. I slowed down a bit for the 2nd km and hit it at 4:08 which was still a bit fast but slowly getting there.

I hit the 5km mark at 20:48 which is actually an unofficial PR for the 5km distance for me. My previous true 5k time is 21:30, but i've run 21:15's or so as part of 10km races before. Sweet. From that point to the 10km mark, I had basically settled into a groove basically nailing the proper split times. One thing I worked in was trying to run tangents on the curvier parts of the course. I also got some practice drinking while on the run. They had these huge cups which were good for drinking from though I probably spilled more than I ended up drinking. It's hard to drink from a cup while doing LT pace. I hit the 10 km mark at 42:02, another unofficial PR.

Up till this, my HR was fairly high. I was averaging around 186 or 187 which I think is kinda high for me, but my breathing seemed okay and my legs were doing okay though I think my cadence had dropped off a bit by this point. Somewhere before the 11km marked, my HR spiked. I don't know if this was just a HR monitor thing or if my heart had started fluttering which is an issue that I think I"ve had in the past. It spiked for about 2.5 minutes and then returned to normal, but I had started to slow down a bit. I missed the 11km marker and hit the 12 km marker with a split time of 8:39 which was just under 4:20 pace. The 14th km was basically the toughest and slowest km of the race and it involved running down this long straight stretch of empty road. I was basically running by myself since I was a minute behind the guy in front of me and 1 minute in front of the guy behind me. There was not much in the way of cheering on this stretch and the endless view of traffic cones along the road was sort of demoralizing. Finished km number 14 in 4:25. Then I pushed hard to the finish line.

Final time of 1:03:35 (6:49 min/miles)

KM	Time	Lap Time	Pace(min/mile)
1	04:00.6	04:00.6	06:27.2
2	08:08.9	04:08.3	06:39.6
3	12:21.4	04:12.5	06:46.4
4	16:32.8	04:11.4	06:44.6
5	20:47.9	04:15.1	06:50.5
6	25:04.9	04:17.0	06:53.6
7	29:18.4	04:13.5	06:48.0
8	33:34.3	04:15.9	06:51.8
9	37:46.9	04:12.6	06:46.5
10	42:02.0	04:15.1	06:50.5
12	50:41.3	08:39.3	06:57.9
13	54:58.5	04:17.2	06:53.9
14	59:23.5	04:25.0	07:06.5
15	1:03:35.0	04:11.5	06:44.8

I watched Yumke finish who was only a couple minutes behind me and looked strong. Also met up with Jelly who was out for a bit of a run and had decided to check out the race. Good to see them again.

I have better things to say about this course this time. The start was earlier and the 15km races were basically done before the sun had set so there was no issue with lighting. I heard a lot of grumblings from the 30k'ers though.

My knee held up surprisingly well during the race though it was starting to ache a bit after while just standing around. Hung around to watch the Running Mania crew finish who were all doing the 30k race. They all did fairly well. Two of them just ran a 6 hour trail race last weekend, they did the 30km yesterday and are going to be doing the Quebec city marathon next weekend. Yikes!

So I got home and plugged my race results into the race predictors to see where I'm at and based on my time, I get the following for my predicted marathon time:

Daniels VDot tables: 3:10:44
McMillan calculator: 3:12:33
Runner's World Training Calculator: 3:10:11
Running for Fitness calculator: 03:12:28, 03:10:44, 03:10:19, 03:11:27

Hmmm, some of these say 3:10:59 is possible, some say it's not. I'm basically on the bubble. I've got 3-4 weeks of solid training left before the taper and I'm hoping that I can shave off the couple of minutes I need to get me my BQ. In any event, I'm pretty happy with this race.

Happy running all!