Scotiabank Half Marathon 2017 RECAP

2024 UPDATE: It's 2024 and I was just checking out old accounts of mine and was reminded of this. I logged in and noticed I had this 2017 post in draft that I never got around to posting. Ha, so for anyone still following, here is some "new" content.

Paced the 1:45 again this year. I think this is the 9th year in a row I've done it.  With a full summer of marathon training and a good three weeks for recovery from a 3:17 marathon in Berlin, was pretty confident that this pace would be okay so my one goal going into this race this year was to get the first km right since I have always seemed to start too fast. In fact, leading up to this most of my training runs between Berlin in this had me ending up at the local track doing laps in the dark mornings, which is actually pretty good cause you really get in tune with one's effort level and pace since you only find out when you hit the lap button what the pace was when the screen gets illuminated.

Glad to say that I started off  and hit the first TWO km in exactly 4:59 which was perfect pace.  Unfortunately, the next 10 km or so ended up being a little on the fast side so i banked up more time than I would have liked.

KM	SPLIT	Relative to 1:45
1	04:59.1	00:01
2	04:59.0	00:01
3	04:52.2	-00:05
4	04:50.8	-00:13
5	04:49.3	-00:22
6	04:46.7	-00:34
7	04:49.6	-00:43
8	04:51.3	-00:51
9	04:55.7	-00:54
10	04:56.8	-00:55
11	04:56.5	-00:57
12	05:04.5	-00:51
13	05:06.2	-00:44
14	05:01.8	-00:41
15	05:03.2	-00:36
16	05:03.0	-00:32
17	04:58.7	-00:31
18	04:57.7	-00:32
19	04:58.7	-00:32
20	04:55.3	-00:35
21.1	05:43.0	-00:21

I think after the slight incline during the first two km, that one really had to back off on the effort level running west on Bloor to avoid taking that next km quick. Coming down Bathurst, one expects to bank a little bit of time due to the elevation drop.  After 11km I had almost a minute banked and I decided at that point I had to make a conscious effort to slow down which I was able to do for the next 5km or so. The remainder of the race was okay. I really tried to take the effort easy coming up Bay st and lost about 15 seconds doing that.

Looking back now, I don't think the pacing was too bad. The wind was a bit weird this year coming from the south so km 10 and 11 had a tail wind and then a head wind up until km 16 so that can easily explain away the quickness and excessive slow down. The headwind was a welcome addition after 11km since it helped to keep me cool. I could have been a bit slower on Bathurst but most of that quickness was due to the elevation drop so I don't think the pacing was too horrible, though I still have to work on that.  If I had bothered to look more often at the Garmin and adjust after 2 km, I think I would have done better. I think I grew a little too confident after the first 2 km to gauge the required effort level and had assumed that the garmin was reading me as going too fast because of GPS issue and not because I was actualy going too fast.

 New Balance was the shoe sponsor this year and they gave us these black long sleeve shirts and cap which were not good for the weather conditions where the sun was out in full force. There have been years when I wish they had given us long sleeve shirts but this was not one of those years.  It was definitely too hot. Temperature wasn't too bad at 13C at start, but he humidity was a bit high and I was sweating pretty early in the race. Felt sorry for the pacers doing the full.  The race had given us permission to cut the sleeves off the shirts if we wanted to. I didn't, but a lot of the other pacers had. Oh well run and learn!!

Polar data at https://flow.polar.com/training/analysis/1862625016