The Toronto Watefront Marathon was #10 for me. The race was held on what I would describe as a mildly undulating course. I quite liked the course in fact. No real steep sections, but plenty of opportunity to use different muscles, hence avoiding repetitive use of the same muscles like you do on a flat course. It's a loop course that heads west for around 13 km's before turning around and heading back east, with a couple of deviations and then turning back to the west with around 6 or 7 km's to the finish. The conditions were mild, but extremely windy. The wind was from the west. Heading out I'd estimate the winds were around 25 km/h, but these picked up well above 30-40 km/h for the final 7 km's, which certainly made the going tough for a marathon finish.
Coming into the race with only 7 days recovery from the Chicago Marathon, I was well aware that I'd be entering unknown territory. The quad pain had eased up by Friday and by Saturday I was feeling in reasonable shape.
My race strategy was to run to heart rate, and totally disregard pace. I did manage to avoid looking at the watch timer, although I did glance at the km splits when I heard the beep. Pretty much from the first km, I felt heavy in the legs. Aerobically I was feeling fine and it was hard to refrain from picking up the pace. As I previously mentioned, I knew this wasn't q day to go after PB's. Control, control, control was very much the order of the day. I wanted to use this marathon to get feedback on running to a planned and structured heart rate schedule.
Without going through every detail of the race, I will divide it into 3 stages:
Stage 1
West bound 13 km's or so into the wind. In order to stay within the target heart rate zone, I was only averaging 4:00 km's. I was feeling very relaxed and just hanging in there for he turn so I could run a little more freely with the wind behind me.
Stage 2
With the wind behind me, I was regularly doing around 3:50 - 3:55 km splits. I was still maintaining the target heart rate zones, but running a little slower than I would've expected with a wind like that behind me. Right up to the 35 km mark, I was still feeling good and ready to work hard for the final windward bound section.
Stage 3
The wind was really strong and it was tough to hang around the 4 min km pace. I really enjoyed this final run to the finish though. There was fuel in the tank and I was able to run strongly all the way to the finish. I passed at least 15 or so runners in the final 7 km's and this is always good motivation. My right leg was cramping a little with 3 km's to go, but I ran through it and evn managed a 3:47 final km into the wind and slightly uphill finish. A guy snuck up behind me with around 400 metres to go. We toed it side to side for about 300 metres and I got him by around 15 metres over the final 100 m sprint.
All up, I ran a respectable time of 2:47:35, with splits of 83:29 & 84:06. Fairly even paced and better than the 2:50 time I would've been satisfied with.
Official splits from the website were:
10 km's - 40:01
1/2 - 83:29
30 km's - 1:58:29
35 km's - 2:18:18
40 km's - 2:38:59
Overall place was 56th & M40-44 Age Category - 8th.
Splits from my watch were as follows:
1. 3:47 (133)
2. 3:51 (147)
3. 4:03 (147)
4. 3:52 (148)
5. 3:57 (149)
6. 3:57 (150)
7. 3:57 (150)
8. 3:56 (152)
9. 4:04 (151)
10. 4:02 (153)
11. 3:57 (150)
12. 3:58 (153)
13. 3:58 (153)
14. 3:52 (153)
15. 3:55 (153)
16. 3:56 (155)
17. 3:50 (154)
18. 3:49 (155)
19. 3:44 (157)
20. 3:52 (157)
21. 3:50 (158)
22. 3:54 (159)
23. 3:52 (159)
24. 3:54 (161)
25. 3:54 (159)
26. 3:52 (159)
27. 3:54 (160)
28. 3:51 (161)
29. 3:50 (162)
30. 3:50 (162)
31. 3:53 (162)
32. 3:58 (162)
33. 4:00 (162)
34. 3:58 (164)
35. 3:55 (167)
36. 3:59 (166)
37. 4:01 (166)
38. 3:59 (168)
39. 4:09 (168)
40. 4:07 (168)
41. 4:09 (167)
42. 4:02 (170)
42.650. 3:47 pace (172)
No comments:
Post a Comment