Training Log Archive: RLShadow

Dog walk in Ellison Wetlands, with Cheryl and Anne. Trying to help my legs recover from Letchworth. Didn't feel too bad except on the downhills.

Looking at the positives about the Letchworth marathon:

- I didn't fall once, and there were certainly plenty of opportunities to take a tumble! (Lots of roots and rocks, waiting to trip people.)

- No injuries.

- No blisters, even.

- Other than very stiff/sore quads, and somewhat sore calves, no real ill effects, 48 hours after the race.

More info about my disastrous race yesterday:

First of all, the main lesson sounds obvious, but it is do NOT enter a race so woefully unprepared! That race was quite a bit harder than I had expected, but still, I should have known that there is no way I should be doing even an easy trail marathon, based on my lack of long runs this spring. Somehow, I let Bob Lonsberry's enthusiasm for the race talk me into it!

Finished 55th overall out of 78 finishers, and out of 94 starters. 3rd out of 4 in my age group.

My splits, between each of the checkpoints/aid stations (including time spent at each aid station, unless the time was fairly inconsequential):

Start to 1: 5.94 miles, 12:22/mile (my optimistic goal for the race was 13:00/mile, my more realistic (I thought) goal was 13:45/mile, but the first few miles were quite easy compared to what I knew was to come, so I felt pretty good about a 12:22 pace initially).

CP1: 0:51

CP1 to CP2: 2.51 miles, 12:48/mile (still feeling good, cruising at a nice pace, but not aggressive -- walked up nearly every hill)

CP2: 1:01

CP2 to CP3: 6.78 miles, 14:24/mile. Race starting to take it's toll on me already, which wasn't good at all, because CP3 was about 15.6 miles into the race -- more than 10 miles to go. Still, I passed Bob Lonsberry at mile 11 (and asked him if he was still planning on running the Buffalo marathon the next day -- he was non-committal!). Passed 5 other solo marathon runners. So even though I knew my pace was fading, I had a false sense of optimism because I moved up 6 places.

CP3: 4:13. Looong stop. Anne was working at this CP, and she supplied me with a cold Pepsi from my cooler, and suggested that I ditch my Camelbak for a hand-held water bottle, because from here on, the check points came much more frequently.

CP3 to CP4: 2.40 miles, 16:02/mile. If there was any doubt that I was rapidly fading, this stretch convinced me. I was doing way more walking than running at this point.

CP4: 0:42

CP4 to CP5: 1.63 miles, 17:28/mile. The fade continues. A bit of an excuse for this leg was that there was a long, steady uphill that gained 300 vertical feet in 0.4 miles, for a 14% incline. By comparison, the average incline of the Pike's Peak Ascent is around 11%.

CP5: 0:36

CP5 to CP6: 2.34 miles, 18:20/mile

CP6: 2:43

CP6 to CP7: 1.32 miles, 17:31/mile

CP7 to CP8: 0.94 miles, 18:29/mile. Finally the course got easier; this was where the FLT follows the gravel part of River Road. Still, there was a steep uphill. And I had pretty much nothing left. Two solo marathoners, who I had passed many miles before, ran past me, and I had no energy to try to stay with them.

CP8 to finish: 1.93 miles, 13:54/mile. More easy stuff, but again, nothing left. I forced myself to run for about half a mile with a lady who I had passed many miles back and who had caught up with me right at CP8, and we chatted for a while, turns out she does a lot of training at Ellison Wetlands, then I excused myself and said I really needed to walk again. Then a few minutes later, I saw a young lady (early 20's) who I had seen a number of times in the earlier stages of the race running behind me, as I was walking. I tried to get myself to run a little to maybe hold her off, but she was looking quite strong and I knew it wasn't of any use. Turns out she was strong indeed, because when I saw the results, she had managed to beat the lady who caught me at CP8 by 10 seconds or so.

C • Congrats 7

Sehgahunda Trail Marathon, on the Finger Lakes Trail, on the east side of Letchworth, from the dam parking lot, to the parade grounds.

Looking at the poor time, it's tough to imagine that I'm calling this "running" or a "race" or Intensity = 5.

It was an extremely tough race, made more difficult by the fact that I didn't have marathon training under my belt. I thought I started out conservatively enough, but I was really dying towards the end, with much more walking than running in the last 10 or so miles of the course.

Overall, the toughest race I can ever remember doing. Way tougher than the Pike's Peak Ascent, the Mendon 50K, or any road marathon I've done.

More comments later, along with some split times that show how badly I faded.

Mileage is the officially stated Fleet Feet mileage, which they said was based on multiple GPS measurements of the course. My GPS said it was a little shorter, at 25.87 miles.

They stated the climb to be "between 3000 feet and 6000 feet" -- quite a range. I absolutely can't believe it was as low as 3000 feet. I could believe 5000 or 6000. My GPS, which is notoriously bad for measuring climb, had it as 10,500 feet. That's clearly incorrect, but if it were off by a factor of 2, that would still put it as more than 5000 feet.

Morning run, before it got too too hot. Left a little after 8:00, when it was around 65 at our house (which is cooler than most other areas, even in our immediate vicinity, where I was running), and it was only up to 67 when I got back. Pretty humid, though. But tolerable.

Ran from home, to Maple, Klem, Drumm, Hojack, Van Alstyne, Klem, Gravel, Rt. 104 path, Maple, and home. Walked the last 0.7 miles because I only intended to do 5 miles, to not overdo it prior to the race on Saturday.

Yet another rest day. Now, I have a bit of an excuse to be resting, because I made the pretty much foolish decision to enter the Letchworth trail marathon (Sehgahunda marathon) on Saturday, despite the fact that I've done nowhere near the training needed for even a flat road marathon, and this will be far more physically challenging than a road marathon. I tell myself that I just need to have very low expectations, and start out extremely conservatively, and I'll be able to finish it. We'll see.

Last year, I did the Letchworth Dam Good Trail Race, 13.7 miles on the same trail that the marathon will start at. My time was 2:38; if I ran the whole marathon at that pace, I'd be doing about a 5 hour marathon. Realistically, that won't happen. So I'm guessing, conservatively (hopefully), I'll be finishing in something around 6 hours.

Last year's Letchworth 13.7 mile race was held on a very brutal day, warm and with near 100% humidity. The forecast for this Saturday is more pleasant than that.

Looking back at my last very long trail race, the Mendon 50K in 2008, I averaged 12:42/mile, which would be the same pace as a 5:33 marathon. Whether the Mendon course is more difficult than the Letchworth course, I'm not sure. The Mendon course wasn't all that technical, with very little single track, but it was quite hilly. The Letchworth course is far more technical, single track almost the whole way, and has a lot of ups and downs. Not sure how the total climb compares between the two courses.

Rest day, kind of. Meaning no workout. Did some more house painting; got the boat uncovered and cleaned off reasonably well; then took the boat out in the late afternoon for a shakedown cruise to make sure it started OK and things seemed to be working like they were supposed to (everything was fine). Pretty tired by the end of the day, which seemed odd because I hadn't done anything remotely close to a workout, and hadn't even done any real hard labor, like digging holes or moving dirt around.

Semi-long run on the canal, around mid-day (not good planning), on a warm, sunny day.

From Schoen Place in Pittsford, to a little past Ayrault Road, and back.

On the way out, ran pretty easily, averaging 9:09/mile. On the way back, I did 2 x 1 mile intervals of moderately faster running, with times of 7:51 and 7:58, respectively, with a mile of easier running in between them.

At the Canoe-O, taking pictures. After getting pictures before and immediately after the start, walked south on some trails to get pictures of people going after the several land controls. It was an amusing sight, to see orienteers on trails with life jackets on, not real close to water. A new look in orienteering fashion?

Distance and time are very rough estimates.

Morning run, on a reasonably pleasant day. Warm but not too warm, and not at all humid.

Ran out the Rt 104 path to Phillips Rd, Phillips to Ridge to Hard, Hard back to Rt. 104 path, and back home. Listened to a couple of Fresh Air episodes, and yesterday's Marketplace.

Quite a bit of house painting today. Not strenuous enough to log as training, but tiring enough that I didn't have any energy for a run. Part of the blame for lack of energy was the trail race last night, in addition to the painting. Hopefully a decent run will happen Friday morning ...

Dirt Cheap trail race #2, Webster Park.

Ran more aggressively than I usually do, which made for a very grueling race. Usually I start fairly conservatively, wind up too far back when the course becomes single track (usually after half a mile or so), then wind up passing a lot of people during the rest of the race.

This time, I really pushed the pace for the short stretch at the beginning that was on a dirt road, so I wouldn't be so far back in line when the single track started. It "worked" in that I had a much better position than I usually do, but it also means that I was feeling pretty bushed a mere half mile into the 5.6 mile race. So I was kind of in "try to hang on and not get passed too much" mode for the next 5 miles.

I wound up passing only two people after the road section ended, and probably 10 people or so passed me.

The course had numerous muddy sections -- maybe 8-10 places where there was ankle-deep mud. Webster Park is normally muddy in the spring, but I had never remembered it being this bad before.

My overall place was 79th out of around 234 starters, or 34th percentile. I think that's better than I usually do, so I guess the aggressive start helped, but it certainly made the race less pleasant.

Finished 2nd out of 5 in my age group, with Tom Dutton beating me by 4.5 minutes.

GPS tracks for Mendon Green course.

http://picasaweb.google.com/RDetwiler1/GPSTracks#5...

Kind of embarrassed to make this public :)

Three very obvious problems:

Attacking #3, made something like a 60 degree error, when trying to find a reentrant that would lead me to near the control. I think the problem was that the reentrant I was looking for really wasn't visible from the trail, you had to go about one contour line up to see what looked like a reentrant. I got drawn to the left by something that looked vaguely like a reentrant but was really a depression. Stupid mistake. Relying on the compass would have helped.

From #3 to #4, got sucked into going on the wrong (parallel) trail. No huge loss, just totally unecessary.

Major problems going to #6. Got very close to the control on the first approach, but I think I got pushed away by some very heavy vegetation, didn't quite get into the control circle, started wandering (away from the control), finally came upon a trail where fortunately I was able to figure out exactly where I was from some trail bends, then found the control.

I think I accidentally hit "stop" instead of "lap" on my GPS at #8, so it showed a straight line from there to the finish (where apparently I then started my GPS, then stopped it). I obviously did not take the straight line route, because that would have resulted in missing #9 and #10, as well as cutting across a corner of Hundred Acre Pond. :)

I really need to get back to Mendon to do a re-run of this course, to hopefully demonstrate to myself that I can execute these fairly simple things OK, given a second chance.

Urban run, from Park near Berkeley. Rough route: Park to Colby, across ped. bridge, to Winton, some side streets, Monroe, Elmwood, Goodman, Highland (through Lilac fest.), back to Goodman, Park, back to car.

Event: ROC - Mendon Ponds Park
 

Green course at Mendon. The specific area was generally SW of Hundred Acre Pond, not the most exciting orienteering terrain at Mendon, IMHO. There wasn't a whole lot for the course setter to work with, so this isn't a criticism by any means, but the course was pretty unexciting as well. Lots of trail and road running (which was probably to my advantage, since I've been running quite a bit lately) with short to medium attacks through fairly thick vegetation to the control point, then 3 fairly trivial controls at the end. With an almost unavoidable swampy trail thrown in for good measure.

Also, the map printing was such that the contour lines in medium green, I found fairly tough to read. And there were certainly places where it was necessary to read contours in medium green.

One really big error, maybe 10 minutes (haven't seen the splits yet), on #5, a reentrant in medium green, with some imperfectly mapped areas (at least they seemed to be) in the vicinity. I'll scan the map and post my route when I get a chance.

Other than that, I used an almost certainly non-optimum route to get to #2, but it seemed a bit safer, given that the more direct route was through about 50-100 m of medium green, being careful to avoid dark green on the left and a swamp on the right. Made a definite bobble going to #3, when I got into the wrong reentrant that I was going to use to get me near the control. Recognized it fairly quickly, might have lost 3-4 minutes.

No major problems going to #6 and #7, just not totally efficient either. Then #8 was trivial, #9 was reasonably easy (after about 600 m of trail running from #8, followed by about 50 m from an obvious attack point to the control), then #10, the "go" control, resulted in about a 20-30 sec error as I tried to locate the control, which was only 90 m from the finish line, and very close to the parking lot. I didn't feel so bad, though, because numerous people finished without even going to the last control (the e-punch download person reminded them of that and gave them the opportunity to go back and get it, then finish again), and I saw one runner on Red who probably searched for 2-3 minutes for it.

Finished 2nd in my age group, to Peter Dady (I was about 5 minutes behind him), and barely ahead of Larry Zygo.

Morning walk at Whiting Rd trail system, with Homer, to gather more GPS data on trails, to be used for the map of Whiting.

No real new insight with this, but I was paying more attention to vegetation and how it would be mapped, etc., than I usually do when I'm just doing a trail run there -- lots of very thick vegetation and/or marshy areas, with a comparatively very small amount of open woods (but not totally insignificant). This area will be a good addition to the Webster Park map in terms of introducing something new, and providing the opportunity to set much longer courses, but it will be a lot of distance covered compared to the orienteering challenge. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- not ideal, but certainly better than not having the use of Whiting.

Urban run. From Park Ave near Culver; into downtown, up the west side of the river to the Ford St bridge, trail through U of R, crossed the pedestrian bridge to the west side again, along river trail to Genesee Valley Park, across pedestrian bridge in the park, canal path very briefly to trail that almost immediately feeds into a U of R parking lot, to Elmwood, Goodman, Park, and back to car.

10 x 400 meters, on Woodland Lane.

Avg 1:42.6, with little variability (fastest was 1:40, slowest was 1:44).

Approx 50 sec walk recovery between intervals.

1.26 mile warmup, 0.52 mile cooldown.

Semi long late-afternoon run. From home, to Maple, Klem, Drumm, Hojack, Holt, Orchard, through North Ponds Park, then Rt. 104 path back to Maple and then back to home.

Sped up on the way back -- I averaged 8:55/mile from home to the bike path at North Ponds Park (5 miles), and 8:17/mile from there home (4 miles).

Long run from home, on a nice morning for a run (low 50's, little wind).

Over to Maple, to Klem, to Hojack, to Holt, Orchard, Rt 250, bike path. Went around pond at North Ponds Park, then bike path back to Maple, and back home.

Listened to a couple of episodes of Fresh Air, including a very good one about the famous AZ immigrant law, and some other recently-passed legislation from AZ. It was refreshingly unbiased in its coverage; don't think I've heard anything approaching such a non-biased discussion of this law.

Semi-long run. Very boring route choice -- from home, to deadend of Woodland, through the woods, to Maple, to Rt. 104 path, took path to Rt. 250, then N on 250 for 100 feet or so to Kittelberger, Kittelberger to North Ponds Park, back to Rt 104 path, and back the way I came.

Temp was around 60 when I started, 70 when I got back. A little warm, and sunny, but really not a bad day at all for a run.

Medium fast run on the Hojack Trail. Drumm to Hard and back.

Rest day. Not that I was all that beat up from the West Point orienteering -- I wasn't moving fast enough to have that as an excuse! Just kind of wiped out -- didn't sleep real well either night down there, nor last night at home. Mowed the lawn, washed the car, did some music practice, sorted through some pictures I took at West Point, mainly of the Sprint. Back to actual exercise tomorrow ...

West Point Day 2 (Long). Green Y. My definition of a "spike" is very loose compared to elites, I'm sure. By that I meant I didn't have to re-attack a control -- but I may not have taken the most efficient route, and I may have gone way slow.

No real major problems, like I encountered on Day 1 in the Middle. One error where I wound up in the wrong reentrant, but fortunately I was pace counting from a good attack point, so I realized fairly soon (when I didn't get to the control by when I expected to) that something was wrong, and I figured it out pretty quick. Might have lost 3 minutes.

(AttackPoint split analysis indicates that my lost time for the total course was 5:15, which is very good for me, and way less than 19 or so minutes of lost time, on a much shorter course, in the Middle distance race on Saturday.)

Generally, though, just very slow. Partly because it was a hot day, partly because it was a very physical course due to the rocky, hilly terrain, but mostly because I just can't go fast in this complex terrain without getting lost, and my goal was to have a reasonably clean run, rather than to be moving fast and inevitably making some big mistakes.

Finished 11th in my age group, out of 18 who successfully did the course, plus 2 who mp'd. Finished 15th out of 41 people (across age/gender categories) who did Green Y.

Forerunner distance was 3.98 miles (6.4 km).

Green Y Long Distance - Splits

Event: USMA West Point A-Meet 2010
 

Middle distance course at West Point.

I was put slightly off balance when I found out, in the starting area, that I was on Green Y, not on Green X (like I think the prelim. info had said). I had the Green X clue sheet in the holder on my arm, so I promptly stowed that in my pocket, to avoid confusion. No loose clue sheets were at the starting area, so I needed to unfold my map on a number of occasions to check the control description and code. No real major loss, just an annoyance.

I did acceptably (meaning slow, but no huge errors) on most controls, but made two big bobbles. One was on #4, which I could tell was going to be tough. It was a cliff, on a fairly steep hillside with probably 15 other cliffs, and no real obvious attack point. I went in hoping to find it (not a real good strategy), didn't, and finally made my way to the top of the hill (about 6 contours up from the control) to re-locate. Then I found it. Nearly 15 minutes on the control; I think others were doing it in 5 minutes or so.

The other blunder was on the second to last control, which was really a very easy on, unlike #4, but I took it too lightly. I've heard that the two controls to be the most cautious about are the first and the 2nd to last. The first for obvious reasons, the second to last because it's late in the race, you're tired, you're looking forward to being done, and you might tend to treat the rest of the course as a formality. I think that's what happened to me. I did 13 minutes on this control, which should have been done in around 3 minutes.

I was 13th out of 19 starters in M60. (Counting two people who started but MP.)

Sprint at West Point.

I had two mistakes due to lack of focus, and one due to not reading the map as well as I should. The two lack-of-focus ones were going to the wrong control (skipping a control). That happened from 4 to 6 (I actually punched in at 6, then realized that the code was wrong, so went back to get 5, then re-punched at 6), and from 11 to 13 (started going to 13, didn't quite get there when I realized my mistake, and then got 12 and 13).

Poor map reading error was on #9, which is a cliff between two barracks. There are four barracks, parallel to each other, going up the side of a hill. The problem was, the 4th barrack was shown in outline, rather than filled in like a building would be. That is there nomenclature for a building that can be passed under (many of the barracks are on "stilts"). I didn't see it on the map. So it looked like the cliff was between the 2nd to last barrack, and the last barrack, which it was really one barrack lower.

A few other relatively minor bobbles, which are far less significant than the about 3 errors.

Finished 6th out of 10 in my age group.

Green Y Middle Distance - Splits

Or/Br/Gr Sprint - Splits