Scotiabank Half Marathon Pacer Report

Did the Scotiabank Waterfront half marathon as the 1:45 pacer again this year.  This is the 6th year that I've done it.  Wow that's seems like a long time.  In previous years I've had to do the run/walk thing and in talking with the pace bunny organizer last year, it was decided that it would be switched to a continuous one this year.  I think when I first bunnied this race, the Running Room were going to be the original sponsors of the pacing team and there was a desire to provide as many run/walk bunnies as possible since the Running Room is a big fan of the run/walk system.  The biggest questions I've gotten in years past was whether there was a 1:45 continuous bunny and so finally I wouldn't have to answer that.

As a pacer, the sponsor, Brooks provides a free uniform which consists of a bright neon green T-shirt, a pair of shoes, a hat, a pair of shorts and a pair of socks.  I didn't actually get the socks this year. When we went to pick up the gear, the only socks they had were white socks with pink trim which were supposedly for the women.  Oh well, not  a big deal.  I decided this year to order one of the most expensive shoes they had as my free pair.  In previous years, I just got the Adrenaline GTS which is the Brooks shoe that I'm most familiar with, but last year when I almost pulled out of pacing, I realized that if I pulled out they were going to charge me $150 so if that were to happen again, I was going to make sure I got my money's worth so I ordered the Adrenaline ASR GTX which is a trail shoe which retails for $180. It's supposed to be waterproof and has Gortex material in it.  I think it will make a good winter running shoe and it looks cool too.  I also looked at the Brooks Transcend which is $190 shoe.  It's a stability shoe but is extremely light.  Maybe next time.

As Brooks is a sponsor, each of the pacer's is obligated to do an hour shift at the Brooks store at the Expo. I ended up going down Friday night after work.  We had our own little pacer booth setup with couches and stuff near the exit where we would answer questions.  I had a few people commented on the continuous switch this year so it appears to have been a sticking point with people.  Also had dinner with Alex and his wife who were up visiting while doing the Detroit marathon.

I spent sometime this year studying the elevation profile prior to the race.  In previous years, I just used the garmin to target about 7:40 min/mile pace for 10 min and then walk for a minute.  This generally worked out well, though I think last year, some of my miles were a bit fast.  This year, with being able to run continuously, I decided I was going to run more by effort level and adjust to the course profile. I headed into the corrals with about 10 minutes to start. This year we were given very specific instructions of which corral we had to be in and where in the corral we should be.  Apparently, there were complaints last year about bunnies not being in the right corrals. So I had to be at the back of the first corral, and the 3:30 bunny was in the front of the second corral even though technically we should be running the same pace. The start of each corral was separated by 5 minutes.  I decided to wear both the garmin and the polar watch again this year.  In previous years, I used the garmin to do the 10 and 1 countdown and monitor for pace and used to polar to see how I was doing overall. 

So as the gun goes off, we start off on University Avenue, heading north which is on a slight incline.  I figured out that the first 3 km should be the slowest of the race.  During the first km, I started to feel my HR strap starting to slip down. I distinctly remembered to tighten up the strap about 20 minutes before race start since that was the one thing I wanted to avoid and here it was slipping down. I usual try to grab the strap and yank it up, but when I tried to do it this time, I ended up unhooking it and it came completely undone.  So I grabbed it before it fell to the ground and started carrying it in my one hand. The other hand of course is carrying this big honking pacer sign and realizing that I only have two hands, I started thinking how the heck was I going to drink at the aid stations without slowing down.  Thankfully a woman running behind me recognized what had happened and she pulled up beside me and offered to carry the sign for me while I tried to get the strap back on.  Thank goodness for the kindness of running strangers. 

 1km: 5:13

Hit the first km at 5:13 which is a tad slow. I didn't really get a chance to warm-up and there wasn't any jostling for position, but I guess the first km is a little uphill and runs around the queens park circle so I suppose there's some ground that gets lost if you aren't running perfect tangents.

2km: 5:00
3km: 4:59

The 2nd and 3rd km are basically right on pace though I suppose effort wise they may have been a tad fast since these km are also on a bit of an uphill.  Crossing past the 3rd km we head south towards the lake on Bathurst. At this point, I announce that we are going to be running downhill and picking up the pace a bit. 

4km: 4:48
5km: 4:46
6km: 4:45

These 3 km are south on Bathurst and involve about a 90 ft drop in elevation.  I tried to keep this under control by not speeding up too fast and the people running around me didn't seem to be breathing too hard so I think the effort level was good.  I ended up running down the middle of the road between the streetcar tracks which was different than in year's past where I had to run off to the side due to the requirement of walk breaks which could potentially interfere with others when done suddenly.

7km: 4:55

Km 7 is technically downhill too but involves a brief climb over a bridge over some railroad tracks.  I had to back off on pace on this climb which is a bit steep, but it immediately descends again right after this.

8km: 4:55
9km: 5:03

Continuing on km 8 and 9 are on Lakeshore Blvd going west and are generally flat.  There was a little bit of wind here and I had to pull down the sign and carry it closer to the body for a little while. 

10km: 5:01 (Split of 49:25)

The 10th km involve a bit of a climb over an overpass and then an immediate descent right after.  I cross the 10km at 49:25 which is a 4:57/km average pace (should be 4:59) which I think is about right given that this is net downhill from the start. This represents a bank of 21 seconds.  Marathon Photo has a video at the 10k split and looking at it, there's a pretty big group that's running with me, much bigger than in year's past when I was doing the run/walk thing.



I pass at about the 19 second mark wearing the neon green shirt and carrying the sign.

11km: 4:52
12km: 4:56

Kilometeres 11 and 12 continue to head west into the wind. Km 11 seems a bit fast though this include the downhill at the Canadian Legion building on Lakeshare so I suppose it's probably about right.  During km 12 my HR monitor straps starts to slip down again and it comes undone.  I ended up catching it again and end up carrying it the rest of the way.  I know the woman who had helped me before was still running beside me, but I decided that I didn't want to bother her again with my problem. I ended up just bunching it into my hand and holding it with the sign so it wouldn't be too difficult to drink at the aid stations if need be.

13km: 4:58
14km: 4:54
15km: 5:03

Km 13 includes the turnaround portion and now we are running with a tailwind.  Things are clicking along as they should.  Km 15 includes the uphill at the Canadian Legion building and I tried to slow down a bit on this climb, but it seems to have been a bit fast.  I think I checked my watch around this time and had about 20-25 seconds still banked.

16km: 5:01
17km: 4:59
18km: 5:01
19km: 5:01
20km: 5:00
21.1km: 5:29


I think it was after a hill that I caught a glimpse of a race photographer.  As a pacer, it's hard to get a good pic cause usually you're surrounded by people and it's hard to be on the lookout for them. I don't really have a good picture of me running as a pacer in the past. I think however this was might be pretty good.  It looks like I'm smiling and just cruising right along, though it's hard to tell because the proof image is so small on the website. The other things is that the woman photobombing me on the right who has her hands in the air like she's about to get arrested is a little distracting.

The rest of the way was pretty much exactly on pace. I was trying to bleed off a bit of the 20-25 seconds, but I didn't want to bleed off too much. It's hard to rely on the garmin after km 17 since you're running close to the tall condos and running under elevated road ways so the garmin isn't providing accurate pace feedback. At this point, I few people doing the full marathon pull up to me and ask about the 3:30 bunny.  I inform them that he started in the corral behind us and is technically a few minutes behind me. I probably should have made an announcement about the 3:30 bunny while I was in the corral at the start telling them to move back if they were looking for a 3:30 marathon finish.

Passing by km 19, I still had quite the group with me, though a lot of people had speeded up to finish faster. I commented into km 19 to the people who were still with me, that I expected everyone there to finish ahead of me. Coming up to km 20, almost everyone took off to finish faster.  In years past with the 10/1 thing, almost everyone takes off during the last walk break and I end up running with no one for the last little bit. Sure you end up passing people and people are passing you, but they aren't technically running with you.  It seems the same thing still applies when you're running continuously. Everyone wants to start with you, but no one wants to finish with you. Passing by the 20 km marker which is just outside of the Air Canada Centre, I knew I still had about 20 seconds banked and I knew I wanted to try and bleed off about 10-15 seconds of that going up Bay St. which is on a slight incline.  While running under the train tracks just south of Front St, I was passing by a runner who seemed to be breathing pretty hard so I was trying to motivate him to stay with me by counting down the minutes and seconds to the finish line. He ended up passing me with about 100m to go and I didn't end up getting to slow down at all going up Bay St and ended up finishing at 1:44:42.

So that's basically it.  I considered this a good pacing performance, much better than last year when I did a few miles at too fast a pace, even though my finish time last year was closer to the goal time.

Weather for this was pretty good.  Not too cold, not too windy.  In year's past, I would stick around to watch the marathoners finish, but this year, I ended up leaving right after the race cause there was one week to my own marathon and I didn't want to be standing around and risk catching a cold.  

Day 2

Scotiabank Pacing Report

Did the Scotiabank waterfront half on Sunday as the 1:45 pacer. Finished 13 sec fast.  Happy with it.

Preliminary stuff for future reference. Woke up at 5am and consumed 3/4 of a bagel and some water. Left home at about 5:50 and was in the Eaton's Centre parking lot off of Shuter by 6:20. Race started at 7:30am. I think this was about perfect for prepping to race.  Allowed ample time to use the facilities, have a quick warm-up jog and get into the corrals by 7:20 or so.

I normally pace using a garmin.  Having looked at enough garmin maps of last years Scotiabank races, I was aware that garmin data was going to be useless for the first few and last few km of the race.  You're either running down the heart of Toronto's financial district with tall skyscrappers or under the Gardiner expressway which is an elevated highway across the waterfront. Either way not very good for getting satellite locks.  With my tendency to start races too fast and not wanting to do this here, I decided to use my Polar foot pod to assist for these portions of the race.  As it would turn out, the data was a bit flakey. I sometimes run into problems when running under hydro lines and I think the street car overhead cables had a similar effect. 

We ended up getting some nice swag from Asics who were sponsoring the pacers.  We got shoes, socks, shorts, the ever fashionable hat with bunny ears and a nice looking pacing t-shirt.

Front and Back

The thing is that this was way too small.  This was a medium size and was too tight on me.  For about 5 minutes, I was actually thinking of wearing this as it's not often that one gets to wear too tight lycra and say that you were forced to do it by someone else (apologies to lycra wearing cyclists, but I think you'll agree with me that there are some who shouldn't be wearing them).  However, i went for a quick 30s run outside with it on (after dark so no one would see me) and i could feel the seams rubbing up against my skin.  With the possibility of rain and the old adage of don't do anything new on race day, the thought of 21km of friction didn't appeal to me.  I ended up wearing the official race shirt (which was unbranded).

Move into the corral at 7:20 or so which wasn't a lot of time.  I had wanted to be in there by at least 7:15, but the entrance to the corrals was really crowded.  I waited for about 5 minutes in line to get into the corrals, taking the time to set up my garmin, but when the line didin't budge that much, i ended up squeezing through.

Got into the corral and answered questions about the pacing which required alternating between 10 minutes of running and 1 minute of walking.  Got asked a lot about 1:45 continuous pacer which wasn't being offered.  I directed these people to the 3:30 full marathon pacer who was running continuously.

Race starts and i start out at a nice comfortable effort.  Hit the first two km at 4:53 and 4:49 when they should have been at a bout 4:45.  Then started the one minute walk break and wasn't that far off by the time 3km came around so i figured the slightly slower run pace could be made up for during a slightly faster walk phase.  As it would turn out, most of pure km split times (that didn't include a walk break) were done at about 4:50 pace and this turned out to work quite well.

So during the first walk break, I surveyed the crowd and  had picked up about 25 people.  When the walk restarted, as i had feared, my HR spiked.  I just put it out of my mind and ran the next 10 minutes fine and then when i took my second walk break, the HR dropped back down and stayed that way for the rest of the race.

The rest of the race was pretty straight forward. Got a fairly solid garmin lock at about 4km and relied on it for pacing up until about 18 or 19km, when the garmin started losing signal. By this point, I think the muscle memory had sort of set in and i could seem to maintain this pace till the end without relying on technolgy.  Kinda funny during the walk break, i only had about 5 people left.  Some had dropped off and some had taken off to finish faster, but i mentioned to the remaining few that there was only 6 minutes of running left after the walk break.  One lady then asks me how much further there is to go and i respond that slightly less than 2 km and she then takes off.  She told me after the race that she had thought the half was actually 26 km long and wasn't sure she was going to make it, but when told that it was only 21, she felt relieved and was able to finish strong.  I guess it's all about mindset.  If you think you can, you will.  The last km is sorta cruel.  They moved the start/finish line further north last year and though the course was once labelled as being pancake flat, the last km is now a steady incline.  My HR basically rose during this last km, as i was trying to maintain a steady pace as i only had about 15 seconds banked at this point.

Garmin Route and Lap Splits

One thing that I kinda had a question with is running the tangents. It's easy enough to do when running alone, but i was very reluctant to run tangents when I had a large group following me as I had feared that the group would create chaos while cutting through a bunch of other runners.  I ended up sticking to the right side of the road meaning that i probably ended up running slightly more than I should have, which means that the people who were running with me were probably running slightly longer than they should have.  this could easily have resulted in a loss of 5 sec/km on some of the curvier parts of the course. 

Ended up finishing 13 seconds ahead of pace.  I ended up carrying the big pacing sign with me for the entire race.  Though kinda big and bulky, it was really light.  A problem I had with it was the handle part was made of a thin plastic tube that seemed fairly rigid, but when the wind would blow, the tube would bend.  Should have probably reinforced it with a piece of wood or something.  .Here's a pic after the finish that i really like.  I'm thinking I might actually buy this.

Does it look like i'm wearing a running skirt?

Had meant to do another 4 miles after, but I just didn't feel like it.Went out to check out my new office building which was at the 300m to go sign.  I had actually hoped to park there on race morning, but they closed off the side streets that led into the parking lot so no dice.

Weather was very humid as it had rained all night.  I didn't find it too bad, but a lot of people were complaining about it after the race.  Had lots of fun.  Would happily pace a half again and hopefully will be able to do it next year also. 

Niagara Half Pace Rabbit Report

So the night before the race didn't go too well. Went to bed at around 11:00pm and set the alarm clock for 6:30. Unfortunately at 3:30am in the morning, the people in the room next to mine decided that they were going to start playing loud music. Actually, it kinda was good, cause i ended up waking up and surfing the net a bit when i noticed the clock on my computer read 4:30. I then realized that the clock radio in my hotel room was actually an hour slow, and I would have woken up an hour later if they hadn't been playing that music. World works in funny ways.

Headed down to the buses which transported us to the start-line and arrived at the start line at around 8:30. Start time was at 10:00am. I kept to myself for the next hour or so. I wasn't wearing my bunny ears and my shirt was covered up so other than the 2 hour sign, i didn't really stick out as a bunny. With about half an hour to go, i figured I should probably make myself a bit more visible in case people had questions. I met up with the 2:15 pace bunny, put on my hat and uncovered the shirt and we jsut kind of hung around answering questions of people that would ask. With about 15 minutes to go I headed off the drop off my bag and do a quick warm-up. Positioned myself in the start corrals with about 5 minutes to go then we were off.

I was carrying the 2 hour sign and had decided I would try and carry it with me for the whole race. This was a bit awkward as I had a bottle of gatorade with me also. First technical problem was encountered about 1 minute into the race. My HR monitor began to slip down off my chest. I tried to yank it back up, but with the damn sign and the bottle of gatorade, it was a bit too difficult. Someone asked me if I wanted them to hold the sign for me, but i being too proud said no. I ended up just yanking the HR monitor strap off and shoving it into my pocket.

Running portion was supposed to be at 8:45 pace, but i ended up hitting the first mile marker at 8:34 which was a bit fast. I had to do 10 and 1's and i'd configured my garmin to do the 10 and 1 thing. About 15 seconds before each split I would yell out that we were walking (running) in 15 seconds. That way it would give a bit of a heads up to people that weren't intending on walking so they wouldn't plow into the back of people. During the first walk break, i surveyed the people around and had about 20 people with me.

By the two mile marker, I had ended up banking about 25 seconds which was a bit fast. I then proceed to slow down a bit over the next few miles to bleed some of the banked time off when I then encountered my second technical problem which was my garmin went all screwy. If you check out the Garmin Route you can see a portion at around the 116 route marker where it appears that the course juts away from the river. Well, the course doesn't actually do that. If you check out the split times, garmin thinks I was averaging 4 minute miles for both the walking and running portions during this stretch. With the incorrect information, I basically was running blind. I couldn't rely on HR to judge pace cause I had taken it off and I just ended up trying to run a comfortable pace. I finally realized that i probably wasn't getting a good satellite lock. I was wearing the garmin on my right hand, but was running on the left side of the road. I was doing this to avoid the aid stations since I had my own gatorade bottle and didn't want to get in people's way. However, I had a bunch of people bunching up around me to the right that were probably blocking the satellite signal so i decided to switch to running on the right hand side of the road which allowed me to get a better satellite signal and the garmin started working again.

Up until this point, I had been drinking some gatorade every time I would walk. The gatorade bottle i was using was the ones with the twisty cap which I've used in the past and really like as it's easy to open and close. However, today the gotaorade bottle i was using must have had a defective cap cause after some time, the twisting action wouldn't work. So a little over halfway through the race, I ended up having to dump the bottle and rely on the aid stations. The water tasted nasty. The aid stations were actually pretty good otherwise as they were manned by some pretty enthusiastic people. Most had screaming cheerleaders and high school kids.

By about the 7 mile marker I was withing 15 seconds of where I should have been at each split and with the garmin working again, i was able to settle into a nice rhythm. i ended up chatting with one very talkative lady from Winnipeg who was in toronto visiting her son and deicded to sign up for the half at the last minute. She said she is mostly a marathoner having most recently done twin cities. I mentioned to her that I was thinking of doing that eventually and we ended up swapping stories of marathons for a little while. It was kinda funny passing people cause they would start swearing when i pulled up beside them. I guess they had a hidden goal of sub-2 hours and when i pulled up, they realized it wasn't going to be.

So getting towards the end, most of the group that I started with were still around and with a downhill portion coming up and most of the people ended up taking off. As mentioned, I ended up finishing at 1:59:46 which was pretty good. I handed off the 2 hour pace sign to one of the group that thanked me afterwards for getting her to sub 2 hours. I was thinking of giving her the hat too, but figured it would be a bit gross with my sweat all in it and such.



So the weather generally co-operated. There was no rain and there was a cross-wind for most of the race and a bit of a head wind at the end. This certainly was fun. I'm thinking it might be fun to try and pace a full since i've never really taken it easy for an entire length of a marathon.

Pace Bunny Half Marathon Report

Did the Hartwell Challenge half marathon as the 1:45 pace bunny today. The event is named after a local runner who died during a marathon back in 2001. Last weekend, there was a posting in a local web forum about the organisers looking for pace bunnies. Since I was supposed to do 17 miles today anyway, I offered to volunteer to be the 1:45 bunny since that pace of 8min/mile would be at the fast end of my long run pace.

I only realized after that the course was really hilly and it really had me worried about pacing since I wasn't sure if I could maintain 8min/mile up some of the hills. They changed the course this year which meant that the elevation data that you get from Motionbased about past runnings of the race wasn't going to be useful. While doing a little google sleuthing, I found a website made mostly for cyclists that will let you plot a route and then spit out an elevation profile for it. The neat thing I liked about the site is that it will automatically follow the contours of a road for you so you don't have to micromanage the plotting of the route. Anyhow the elevation profile it spit out looked nice in places (ie., downhills) and brutal in others (ie., uphills).

So arrived fairly early and checked in and was given a Brooks running cap with bunny ears on it that read 1:45. I was a bit paranoid about the pacing so I had calibrated my polar food pod on Saturday for 8min/mile pace. The foot pod is almost deadon accurate if you happen to be running at the pace it was calibrated at. I also had a 1:45 pace band and my garmin. While fooling around with the garmin last week, I disovered the avg/pace per current lap display which is a great tool as it lets one adjust their pace on the fly during a race without having to depend on the wonky instantaneous pace feature of the garmin. For example, if one is running 8min/miles and you happen to be 15 s behind pace at a certain point in the race, you can mentally adjust the pace to get back on track by running 7:55 over the next 3 miles. What's cool is that the avg/pace per mile in the garmin gets more accurate the farther into the lap you go, so if the avg/pace says you're doing 7:50 for the current lap, you slow down a bit until it gets back to 7:55. By the time, you reach the next mile marker you should have avergaed 7:55 which then means that you're made up the 5 seconds and now are only 10 seconds off pace. Hope that makes sense.

Anyhow the race starts and as usual I started out too fast. I didn't think I was going too fast becasue everyone was passing me, but I hit the first km at 4:44 (should have been 4:59). I felt that I was breathing a bit too hard. Other than the fast first km, things were pretty good from that point on. I had a couple of people with me at the start, but they immediately dropped back at the first hill. I had decided to try and run even splits for the race since I could use the garmin and polar to judge how fast I was going. I figureed that trying to run even effort would have made me crazy since with the big hills I was never going to know exactly how ahead or behind I was at any given point and whether or not I was going to be able to make up any differences.

Somewhere around the 4 km mark, I lost one of my bunny ears. The bunny ears were made with construction paper and they had been stapled to the hat. A little bit of sweat had gotten into the paper and with the strong wind blowing, well it ended up tearing off. I continued on with just the one ear, making sure to try and hold it in place whenever I sensed the wind blowing. About 3 km later, the other bunny ear ripped off. I went back and picked up the bunny ear and ran the rest of the race with it in my hand. This was a bit awkward since I was also carrying a bottle of gatorade, plus I had to hit the lap button on both the garmin and my Polar watch after each km marker.

By this point, I had really only picked up one other runner who was gunning for 1:45. We started chatting a bit and she was saying that she was more into the tri scene but that she was hoping to better her PR time of 1:47. I wasn't sure that this was the course to try and set a PR, but she seemed to be doing okay. Shortly after the 7km mark, there is a 60m elevation drop over about 3 km. I sent my fellow 1:45 runner on her way down the hill to bank some time since I was trying to run even splits. She ended up staying slightly ahead of me for most of the race until there was only about 5km to go.

There were a lot of rolling hills, up and down, up and down. Trying to run even pace was forcing me to push the HR up, but it wasn't too bad since it meant that I could also recover a bit on the downhills. By the 11km mark, I had banked about 40 s of time. I guess the 5 seconds here and there adds up. I used the garmin avg pace feature to slowly dwindle this down to the point where I was only 11 seconds ahead of pace by the 20k mark. I'm pretty sure the last 1.1km was a bit long cause I ended up finishing at 1:45:07 chip time. Polar measured the last little bit at 1.16km and garmin says it was 1.2km. Anyhow my fellow 1:45 runner was suffering a little bit at the end, but she ended up finsihing a little behind me at 1:45:17 for a new PR! As we shared congratulations after, she commented "Who says you can't PB on this course!"

Well a fun experience. I wanted to try and squeeze in another 4 miles afterwards since I was supposed to do 17 miles for the day. i ended up doing another mile or so but just wasn't motivated to do the rest.

So here's the HR monitor info. Notice the nice constant pace and the HR going up and down with the hills. (No HR spikes, Yah!) The elevation profile is very similar (though not identical) to the one that the bikely website spit out.

Oh yeah, someone actually picked up my other bunny ear during the race and ended up returning it to me afterward. He said he was trying to use it as motivation to catch me.