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
I have been training for this race for months. After I completed the Shamrock marathon in March, I started targeting the Chase Corporate Challenge. My goal has been to be one of the four fastest men from my company. Last year, the four fastest men ran 20:03, 23:30, 25:10, and 25:19. I have those times memorized now. I have run the distance on a treadmill in 24:24 (about 7:00 pace). I have run as fasr as 5 miles at 7:00 pace, though it was before Shamrock. I have run 5k (3.1 miles) at 6:45 pace (also on the treadmill). But I haven’t run this far, this fast outside. One positive is that I tend to run faster outside. Last year I ran the first 2 mile leg of the Black Diamond Duathlon at 7:04 pace and that was cross country running.
My plan for this evening is to try to run at 7:00 pace for the first couple miles and maybe pick up the pace. If I feel good (a relative term) early on, I may even pick up the pace. I just need to keep going for about 24 minutes. No walk breaks. I might be able to grab some water along the way.
My company offered us tech shirts if we chipped in part of the cost ($7). I paid my $7 and got a cool Brooks tech shirt. It’s red and the graphics are good. I buzz cut my hair last night. I will wear my white Under Armour mesh hat. Not sure about sun glasses yet. I may skip them. I am planning on wear my Garmin 305 for pacing and my iPod shuffle for distraction. I want my tunes!!!!
There are 11,000 people signed up and I am planning on lining up near the very front. Maybe 10 people deep from the front this year.
I just hope I can hold the pace! There is a hill toward the beginning. Ack! I am frigging nervous about the race. I just want to get it over with!
I am planning on drinking a non-diet Pepsi before the race for some extra last minute sugar and caffeine.
Did I mention I am nervous?
I am starting my swim lessons in about 3 weeks. After which I am going to try to get into a habit of swimming laps a couple times a week to build my swimming skills and endurance. With my goal of doing an Ironman triathlon next year, I need to be able to swim 2.4 miles. According to the website, the lap swimming part of the pool is 25 yards long. I looked it up and found that I will have to swim 35.2 laps to have swum (swimmed?) a mile. So 2.4 miles would be about 85 laps. There is no way that I would able to keep track of counting those those laps in my head. I decided to by a watch with a counter. What better kind of watch to get for doing Irorman training than a Timex Ironman Triathlon watch? 
I started search the web and found there area bunch of different models. Men’s and women’s styles. 8 laps, 30 laps, 42 laps, 100 laps, etc. There are even models with heart rate monitors and GPS’s! I decided that I wanted a Timex Ironman Triathlon watch that would count up to 100 laps. I figured that would work when I try to swim 2.4 miles in the pool.
Even among the 100 lap models, there were still a variety of styles. As far as reviews about the quality of the watches, pretty much all of the reviews were postive. So I wasn’t too concerned about the quality of any of Timex Ironman triathlon watches. So it came down to style. I wanted a watch that said Ironman Triathlon! I wanted a reminder of what I will be training for.
All of the models had Ironman Triathlon on the face. Some of the models had a simple M-Dot logo on the side. I found one model that actually says Ironman triathlon on the band. It looked really cool. And the reviews were good. That was the one I wanted. I found it on amazon for about $45 plus shipping. I walked over to target, and found a couple 30-lap models on sale for $30. They also had a 100-lap model for $50. But it wasn’t the one I wanted. I searched Walmart’s website and found the watch I wanted for $46. So last night after karate clas, I hit Walmart. They had a small handfull of Timex Ironman watches. I found a 100 lap model that looked different than the one I wanted, but it was only $44. It said Ironman Triathlon of the side and was waterproof to 100 meters. Perfect for swimming and counting my laps. When I got it home, I read through the instructions which are in a dozen languages and kind of hard to follow. I managed to set the time and play with the lap timing stuff. It will work great. After comparing it to the picture of the watch I wanted, I relized it was in fact the same watch. I just looked brighter in the pictures on the net or something. It is a cool watch though!
This is the watch I bought: Timex 100-Lap Ironman Triathlon 66801.
I have a Horizon T900 treadmill. There is a little backdoor to display information or tweak the the treadmill settings. I haven’t played much with them for fear of goofing up my treadmill.
You can get into the engineering mode by holding the “incline +” and the “speed -” buttons at the same time for about 5 seconds. Then you can use the speed +/- buttons to go between the different modes. Then you can hit the Enter button to select a particular engineering mode. You can press and hold the Stop button to exit.
Engineering Mode 0 (ENG0)
Display Test
Engineering Mode 1 (ENG1)
Hardware Test
Engineering Mode 2 (ENG2)
Auto Calibrate
• Press, “ENTER” to select. Press, “START” to begin. The treadmill running belt will begin to move automatically and the auto-calibration sequence will properly set and store the speed values.
• Upon successful calibration, the treadmill will beep several times. The console will automatically exit Engineering Mode and return to the start-up screen
Engineering Mode 3 (ENG3)
Switch Function
Engineering Mode 4 (ENG4)
Information
• Press, “ENTER” to select. Accumulated time and distance will display on console.
• Press and hold the Stop button to back out of each menu. (or just turn the treadmill off).
I don’t know what the other engineering modes do. If someone else knows, I’d love to hear about them. I suppose you could just select each mode, and see what happens. But as I said, I am afraid of goofing something up on my treadmill and I need it to do my marathon training.
I have decided to try to register for the Lake Placid Ironman (Ironman USA) in 2009. This years event is on July 20th. I am running an ultramarathon over in that area on the 19th, and I heard you could register onsite. I figured I could run the ultra on Saturday, head to Lake Placid on Sunday, watch some of the event on Sunday and sign up. So I started doing some research. I found that people doing this years Ironman could register for next years on the Saturday, the day before the race. Registration for next years event opens on Monday. I have a friend who is going up to watch the event and to register for next years event. She said you have to get into line at 5am. Unfortunatly, I can’t be there on Monday. Registration opens online on Moday as well. It opens at noon, and whatever openings are still available will be there. I have read that it sells out online in minutes. So I guess I will have to be right there, and ready to register online.
If I don’t get into the Lake Placid Ironman, I will try one of the other Ironmans. I was told the Louisville Ironman was easier to get into. At least last year it was. And that is in like August. I’ll have to find out when registration opens for that. But I will have to find out what my wife’s schedule will be. I don’t even know if she will know.
If not Louisville, then there is Wisconsin and maybe Florida. I am bound to get into some Ironman event eventually. I hope it isn’t as frustrating and as big of a PITA as trying to buy a frigging Nintendo Wii!!!!