Since I finished the Shamrock Marathon in March, I have been training for the Rochester Chase Corporate Challenge. I have basically been using a marathon training schedule for this race. I raced it last year only 4 days after having run the Buffalo Marathon. I Had managed to do it at an 8:35 pace which was great for me at the time. Much faster than I had thought I could run it.
Yesterday was the race. There was limited parking at RIT where the race was being held, so they had shuttle buses. I parked at marketplace mall, and caught the bus from there. The guys directing traffic sucked! There was a lot of traffic there. I saw a sign saying race parking entrance. I saw another car pull in there, and I followed only to have the traffic guy yelling at me saying all the way to end and pointing to different parking lot. WTF? I drove through this parking lot and saw it was full. I pulled back out into traffic, and went to park into a different area, and had a different traffic guy yelling at me. I just wanted to park and these guys weren’t doing a very good job of directing people to where they were supposed to be going. Screw em! I managed to park and walked to the busses. The bus ride was uneventful.
I arrived at RIT before 6pm, and the race wasn’t scheduled to start until 7pm. I quickly found my Company’s tent. I signed in, and went to find a porta-potty. That business completed, I headed back to the tent.
I hung out for a while trying to relax, talking to people I knew, getting my number pinned on, changing into the race shoes, etc. There were announcements over the loud speakers for the 6 and 7 minute pace runners to start lining up. So I headed to the start line. With 11,000 people, I spent a bit of time weaving through people to get to the front. My goal was to start off at about 7:00 pace, and hopefully pick it up in the last mile or mile and a half.
I managed to get to the front. I ran around a little bit to warm up my muscles a little bit. It was interesting to be up that far. There were a few people from my company there. I only recognised them by their shirts. I didn’t know them personally. But my company has thousands of people working in multiple locations, so thats not a surprise.
I was talking to one of the guys and another guy came up and asked if I was the other guy’s dad. I think I said something like “f$*% you!”. I asked the one guy his age, and he said 24. So I guess being 44 myself I am old enough to be his dad. But still…
There were various speaches, and the national anthem. Then the starting horn went off. I hit start on my Garmin 305 and took off running. It was nice starting from up here as I was running at the same pace as the people around. Last year I lined up between the 8 and 9 minute flags. And even though I ran averaging 8:35 pace, I spent most of the first half of the race weaving through walkers and slow joggers who lined up where they shouldn’t have been. But this year I was running right where I should have been. I did pass some slower people, but they weren’t walking or going extremely slowly.
I hit the first mile marker at around 6:30 something. So I ran the first mile a little faster than planned. The first water stop was just past the first mile mark I think. I grabbed a cup on the run took a sip and poured the rest over my head. I had my MP3 player cranked up and it was nice to have tunes on my run.
At about the 2 mile mark I slowed and walked for 10-15 seconds. I was getting tired and short of breath. Oh well. I started running again. I was starting to get a side stitch which last the whole second half of the race. Ack!
I think the the next water stop was maybe at the 2.5 mile mark I think. I walked through the water stop got a couple cups that didn’t have much water. I drank one and poured the other over my head, then started running. It would have been nice to have a little more water in the cups. I was getting very tired. I was seeing a few of the guys from company ahead of me. But I kept running my own pace probably around 7:00 minute/miles. In the last turn I was running right behind one of the guys from my company. I tried to stay in his blind spot with a plan of passing him at the finish line. But as we go onto the straightaway, he sped up, but I didn’t have anything left. I crossed the finish line in 24:24. That works out to an average pace of 6:58 minute/mile. Pretty much where I was trying to do. I hit the stop button on my Garmin 305.
After I crossed the finish line I went and sat down against the fence. A volunteer came to see if I was alright. I told her yeah, I just needed to sit for a bit. After a minute or so I got up and continued on down the chute. I got some water. They had some vitamin water stuff, but I wanted pepsi or coke or something. But no such luck. I grabbed a couple bananas.
I pickup up my race t-shirt and headed back to the tent. I turned in my time. I thought I came in as the 4th fastest guy from my company. But I found there were a couple guys ahead of the small group that finished just ahead of me. So I think I came in as the 6th fastest man from my company. Ohwell. The guys that finished ahead of me were all 20 something year olds I think.
I relaxed, and ate some of the food and talked to others as they came in.
The first buses were scheduled to leave about 8:30, so I headed over to be on one.
When I got home, I uploaded the data from my Garmin 305. I was surprised to see the heart rate results. I know my max heart rate is about 194. I tested this running on a hill last year. During the race, my heart rate averaged 182. And it had climbed to 192 by the end of the race. Wow! No wonder I was tired and needed to sit down!
Here is the Motion Based data from my Garmin: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/acti
vity/5792683

Posted by Rob in Whatever on May 30th, 2008 |