I ran the Law Day 5K in Salt Lake City this morning. Chad invited me onto his team, and we decided to make a family day out of it, with brunch and the Salt Lake City Zoo afterward. We got up at 4:45AM, ate breakfast, and scooped Seth out of bed and straight into the car seat, still in his PJ’s (hoping he would fall back asleep…he didn’t).

Got to the U of U campus at 7AM, parked, found Chad, got my number, and then warmed up. Ran about a mile with Chad, and then I met up with Sasha and Jeff, and we ran the whole course. I’m glad we did the whole course, because there are lots of little turns, curbs, bumps, and other nuances. I would describe the route as “goofy but fun”. The first mile is mostly uphill, and then the last two miles are mostly flat or downhill. And lots of turns, did I mention that? But the course was well-marked, and I never had any issues during the race.

This is a team competition between law firms, and Chad had assembled a group of ringers to beat the beat the other law office’s group of ringers. It was myself, Jeff McClellan, Josh Stephan, Emily Bates, and Lindsey Dunkley on our team, going against Teren Jameson, Nate Hornok, Albert Wint, Sue Nielson, and Devra Veirkant on the other team (forgive my spelling on all names, or if I missed anyone). We all matched up pretty well, so it would be a toss-up. The winner is based on cumulative time of all 5 team members. Last year’s competition was decided by only a few seconds. Obviously, I was most worried about Teren, but was also concerned about Nate Hornok, as he is quite fast at the 5km distance. On my team, I expected to get stiff competition from Jeff.

I finished the warmup, and was surprised to see how many other runners were there. Several hundred, a good turnout. Found an empty bathroom inside, and finished up that whole business. Did a few strides, and they were ready to start the race. (after a lot of talking).

They started the race with a gavel, and Teren immediately tore off at a mad pace on the initial downhill part. Jeff was hot on his heels. I didn’t go out with them…because I couldn’t. It was pretty much beyond my full sprint. There was some other guy ahead of me as well, but I passed him after about a quarter mile. The race turned left, and started going uphill. I just tried to keep them both in reach.

We wound around campus. All of the turns made it fun, but I had no idea how fast we were going. Seemed too fast though. I managed to make up some ground on Jeff and Teren and got within a second or so of them, but then they extended their lead on a short downhill section. Then we had a fairly long, straight uphill around the one-mile mark (which I missed), and I closed a little bit on them again. At 2km the course turns right and starts going downhill. Teren and Jeff extended their lead again on the downhill and started to gap me pretty good. I was running about as fast as I could, but it wasn’t fast enough. Kind of the story of the race. And I’m not sure why I was running the uphills better than the downhills.

And that’s pretty much how the rest of the race went. Teren and Jeff were running up front, and I was chasing, chasing. Lots of twists and turns, lots of downhill, but also some flat stretches and uphill segments. It was kind of a whirlwind. I felt pretty good, never felt like I was tanking or losing my form, but I just couldn’t catch them. I never really gave up the idea that I could close the gap, until about 1km left, and by then the lead had gotten pretty big. I finished the race strong, and came in about 20 seconds behind Teren and Jeff. It was actually a pretty good race to watch. Jeff was obviously running with some fire and enthusiasm to try to take down Teren (when you’re at the top, you’re a marked man). Jeff even made a move and passed him during the last mile, and I thought he might get it. But Teren was able to finish off the race, and ended up a couple seconds ahead of Jeff. But it was a gutsy and strong performance on Jeff’s part. Good race by Teren too. The guy definitely knows how to race, and when to turn it on.

Jeff and Teren finished a few seconds under 15:00, and I came in at 15:16. Turns out that Nate Hornok was hot my heels, as he finished in 15:20 or so. I think he was probably closing a bit on me, and just ran out of road. Speaking of running out of road, due to these fast times, we all suspected that the course was a bit short. The route is usually certified, but part of the route is in a construction zone this year, so they had to throw something together, and when that happens it’s usually not accurate. But better short than long, in my book. Less running.

It was a beautiful morning to run. Perfect weather with clear skies and no wind. I enjoyed this race and felt pretty good. Results are still being sorted out due to a timing issue, but it looks like we won the team competition. The top 2 runners on each team pretty much canceled each other out, but we gained a lot with our first woman finisher, Lindsey. Good race also by Josh, who I think beat Albert for the 3rd male slot.

Oh, and splits? I have none. Both miles and kilometers marked, but they were the tiniest little signs ever. Humorous, actually. I like racing splitless, so I’m good with it. But each marker was a little 4″x4″ card on stick. The only one I caught was 2km, and I was at 6:25-ish.

Enjoyed brunch and the zoo after the race.

Went to Utah State for the Mark Faldmo track meet. I had signed up for the 5000m as an open runner. This was my first track race in 9 years, so I was a little nervous. Fortunately, it’s a pretty low-key invite.Got there early in case the meet was running fast, and indeed it was ahead by about 30 minutes. I warmed up for 2 miles, used the potty, etc etc. The 200m finished, but then it took a while to get the women’s 5000m going, and then finally it was our turn.

There were only 7 runners that ran the race, but one of them was Brian McKenna, Utah State’s top runner. He’s the WAC xc champ, and made nationals this fall. He recently ran 14:30 for 5K on the track, so definitely my superior at this distance. Fortunate for me, he’d already run the 1500m, so was not fresh. Unfortunately to me, I suck at the 5000m, and was at the end of an 80 mile week.

Chatted with Brian before the race, and we agreed to trade some laps and try to run 72s/lap. I was actually a bit dubious of my ability to do this, with lack of speed work, plus an intense sun with temps in the low 70s, and a decent wind going into the backstretch. Conditions were less than ideal for a distance race. But I figured my options were to run with McKenna, or run by myself, so I chose the former. I tried to alleviate the heat some by dunking my head in the steeple pit right before the race. Felt great at the time, but I was bone dry by the 3rd lap.

Gun went off and about 4 of us packed up quick for the first 200m, but then I managed to get around everyone and tuck in behind McKenna. First lap was a 74-75 or so, which was too slow, plus it felt awful. McKenna and I cleared out the pack on the 2nd lap, and were through the 800m in about 2:25, so about a 70s split. Quite a bit faster, but it actually felt good.

After 800m, I took the pacing duties for the next two laps, and we hit 4:50 at the mile. Pace was feeling hard, but sustainable for the time being. Brian took the lead back (and I was grateful to tuck back in and let him take the wind), and we hit a couple more 72-73’s for the next two laps.

At just less than halfway through, I started feeling…less than good, and McKenna dropped me pretty quick. He kept running 72-73s laps, and I dropped back to 75s/lap. I went through 3200m in 9:46, so 4:56 for the 2nd mile. This drop in speed is the 5K equivalent to a death rattle.

McKenna was soon on the verge of being long gone, and I was fast wilting from the heat and from fatigue. Man, it was hot! My left calf, which had been giving me trouble for the last 10 days, decided that 2 miles was enough, and started misbehaving with 4 laps to go. It hurt, but not too bad, and I was able to deal with it. So it goes.

Lap 9 was a 76, and then a 77. Things were going downhill, but at least I was close enough to sense the finish and find some hope in that. McKenna now was approaching a 100m lead on me, and no one was close to me from behind. I was about to lap a couple runners, though. I didn’t grab splits for the last two laps, but they were about the same as the previous two, in the 76s range. I just gritted to the finish the best I could. 15:27 was the finish time (McKenna was 15:05), which means my last mile was something like a 5:05. I was never great at finishing track 5K’s.

So it wasn’t an amazing race or anything, but I came out of it fairly satisfied with both the time and the effort. It was good for me to try to run with a national-caliber collegiate runner, and the heat, wind, and elevation certainly tinkered with my time some. I would have liked to have been in the low 15’s, but I have to take what I can get on the given day. It was a little discouraging to run slower than my solo First Dam Run effort last November, but I know I’m actually way ahead of where I was then. I still think that sub-1:07 is still worth going after in Indianapolis, and hopefully the next several weeks of training, plus sea level, plus better conditions, plus a little more moxie will allow me to click off 5:05/mile for 13.1 miles. We’ll see.

Went to the Logan Zoo with Stacy and Seth afterward, and then I grabbed 5 more miles when we got home to finish out my week. The calf hurt, but was runnable.

The next two weeks of training are big for me. I plan on two 85 mile weeks, with two good workouts each week. I hope it’s all worth it, because training is hard work.

Note: In a futile attempt to spice up this blog (ie - get more than one posting per year), I’ll be re-posting my race reports for this year, originally posting on my training blog. Hopefully this series of race reports will turn into a good story in itself, where I qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials at the end of the year. We’ll see. But most good stories start out with very humble origins, and the race described below certainly showed me how far off I am from the OTQ.

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Today I ran a local race, the Smithfield Shamrock Shuffle 5K. By “local”, I mean, “race that I can run to from my house”. The Smithfield Rec Center puts it on along with the Cache Sun ‘n’ Snow Runners. I like running the S’n'S races, because they know how to put on a race and they are nice folks. Plus, this race was only $5, and you get $1 off if you wear green. So I wore green.

I slept in until 7AM today, and then got up and decided to do a short run to get some extra miles early (since it was supposed to snow later), and to try to shake out some of the crud in my legs. I ran from my house down to the race start line (about a mile), and then ran the 5K course. The first half mile is a pretty decent uphill with about 125 ft of gain. I run it several times a week over the course of my daily runs, and it’s no fun. The next 1.5 miles is a nice, fast downhill. The route loses about 230 ft during this stretch. The final mile is a gradual but noticeable uphill, about 70 ft of climb over the mile. Due to the uphill start and uphill finish of this loop course, I rank it as a moderately difficult route. Not as hard as Striders 5K, but certainly much slower than First Dam Run, TOU 5K, Heart of Holladay, Draper Days, and courses like that. For my shakeout run, I just did the route pretty slow. Felt like garbage.

I went back home after the first run (about 5.5 miles total), ate breakfast, read, drank some coffee, and put some finishing touches on the new Wasatch Back Relay maps. Typical Saturday morning stuff. At about 9:15AM, I realized that I should probably get back down to the Rec Center and register, since the race starts at 10AM. I found a few dollar bills, stuffed them in my tights, and headed down.

Registered, warmed up a little more, talked to some people, met some new people. The typical pre-race stuff I really like. Eventually, the race management herded us all up to the start line, and they got the race going, pretty close to on time.

Being a small, local fun-run, a few kids bolted out to the front, most notably a junior high girl and a junior high boy. The girl faded pretty quick, but the boy kept putting distance on me (keep in mind we’re going up a 4% grade hill). I just tried to run steady and not too hard, especially since I wasn’t really in the mood to run hard today. Near the top of the hill, before the turn, I started reeling the kid in. I was kind of feeling sorry for him, knowing that he would certainly die a painful death the rest of the race, but was also waxing nostalgic a bit for those days of my own youth, when I could just sprint up hills without fearing the consequences.

We turned the corner from 600 S onto 1000 W, and uphill turned into downhill. I passed the kid, and just tried to keep a strong push on the downhill, and also regain my breath at the same time. Soon, I couldn’t hear any footsteps behind me, and I knew the rest of the way would be a time trial/workout. I hit Mile 1 in 5:16, which was faster than I thought it would be. Turns out that I have a favorable cross-wind/tailwind. Garmin time matched pretty well with the road mark. Cache S’n'S use a wheel for a lot of their courses, so they are usually pretty accurate.

The downhill flattened out a bit as I neared Hyde Park, but then the route made another right turn onto 4400 N, and I had another mile or so of fairly big downhill. I just tried to enjoy the ride, knowing that I was going to get uphill (and a headwind) for the last mile. My Mile 2 split was 4:57. The crosswind was not favorable in this direction, which slowed it down slightly, but not much.

Right after Mile 2, I turned the corner onto 300 E. Now it was a gradual 1% uphill, and also a mild to moderate headwind. I wasn’t feeling too motivated to finish out the race with a bang, so just tried to run steady and reasonably strong. And behold, I made it back to 600 S, and turned the corner. Hit Mile 3 split in 5:23.

At this point, I had about a 2% uphill to the Rec Center/Skyview parking lot, and then a left turn into the lot, and into the chute. Pretty much just coasted in, victorious, but lazy. I averaged 5:30-pace for the last 0.1. I ended up stopping at the beginning of the chute, but the finish line was at the end of the chute. So my garmin time was 16:21, but my offical time was 16:27, since I walked it in. Ah well.

Second place was a Mountain Crest freshman, about 17:30 (good effort). Surprisingly, the 7th grader who rabbited out so hard was 3rd place with 17:50. I was actually quite impressed, given his age and race strategy. Kid probably has a future with running.

I never felt that great during the race, and wasn’t really in the mood to race, but that’s why I thought it would be good to do a race. Sometimes I need a little push like that. My next race (Striders Half) will hopefully be a little bit spunkier, and then my third race, a peak race, I’ll hopefully have all the cobwebs kicked out and fire on all cylinders. My achilles has been concerning me since early February, so I’ve backed off on speedwork, tempos, hills, and strides, which certainly hurt 5K speed as well, but my endurance is still pretty good. Hopefully the speed will come around. I’ll have to see how my achilles responds to racing flats and a race effort, and gauge my future training off that. I’m hoping I can start getting back into some quality work again. The achilles has not been hurting while running lately, but is a little sore to the touch when I push on it the right way.

After the race, I talked to some more people, met some neighbors, etc. Decided to stick around for the awards, and glad I did, because I won an exercise ball in the raffle, and then a $20 Al’s gift certificate for 1st place. Not bad for a $4 race that I didn’t even need to drive to.

After awards, I joined up with the Red Rooster and with DaveS, and we shuttled up to my house, where I changed my shoes, and then we cooled down for 6 miles by doing an out-and-back to Smithfield Canyon via Summit Dr. During the time of the awards, the weather really took a turn for the worse. The wind picked up about three-fold, and it also started snowing. The first part of our cooldown was just terrible, as we were going straight into the wind, but then it got better after that, and the last four miles were decent. I’m just glad it wasn’t that windy during the race.

Anyway, kind of a “beh” start to the racing year, but that’s how I wanted it. Time to eeeaase back into racing, so mission accomplished.

Kind of a miscellaneous blog posting today, but I’m in the mood.

So what’s going on in my neck of the woods? This past Saturday I ran my first 5K in well over a year. I won the Top of Utah 5K with a time of 16:17. It was a fast loop course, and supposedly certified (although I could not find it in the USATF database). I was hoping for under 16 minutes, but I’ll take it. It was a weird race though; I never felt like I was straining, and kept pushing the pace, yet I had no speed. All of my mile splits were within 3 seconds of each other, I hit a slight negative split, and I felt like I could have kept going for 10K. So although I was not happy with my leg turnover, I was pleased with how strong I felt. 5K’s usually hurt a lot more. My full race report is here.

Next up is The Other Half, a half marathon in Moab on October 19th. I would like to break 1:12 on this rolling course. My 5K time alone gives me a thumbs-down that I can actually do this, but on the other hand I don’t think my solo 5K effort is representative of what I can do in a half marathon (where my lack of burst won’t be as big of a hindrance). Furthermore, I feel like my training is just hitting stride. After a couple weeks in the mid-60s, my mileage for the next 3-4 weeks will be in the mid- to upper 70s, and perhaps will hit 80. This includes two big workouts per week as singles (14-16 miles), a Saturday long run, and easy doubles the rest of the days. Standard fare, but tried and true. I’ve found that racing success is largely a function of training time. Stringing together many consecutive weeks of consistent mileage and solid workouts will yield fast times when it’s time to put on the flats. It’s not a glamorous concept, but very true.

This weekend I will be captaining an aid station at the Bear 100, our local 100-mile ultra run. The race starts at Logan Dry Canyon and traverses through the Bear River Range all the way to Bear Lake, Idaho. I am in awe of ultra runners. I have no aspirations (or delusions) of joining them, but enjoy serving them at the aid stations. This year, my station is at Richards Hollow (Left Hand Fork of the Blacksmith Fork). It looks like it will be a beautiful day, and my wife and 2-month old son will be coming as well.

I enjoy the aspect of volunteering, simply because it shows the other side of races, and allows us to give back to the race and to other runners. As a competitive runner, I usually do nothing but take, take, take from races. Volunteering helps me counter that consumer-ish attitude (and also helps me appreciate volunteers more from the races I run!). If you’ve never helped direct, administrate, or volunteer for a race, I highly recommend doing so. It will make you look at races completely different, and you may be less likely to complain the next time something at a race irks you.

In honor of the upcoming Top of Utah Marathon this weekend, today’s topic is about the other race in the event: the Top of Utah 5K. This race is especially of interest to me this year, as I am running it. TOU will be my first 5K since July of 2007, so compound that with my rather “interesting” training this year, I’m not quite certain how I will do.

Fortunately, I do know a few things about the race:

1. It is certified, so I can expect it to be the correct distance
2. It is a relatively flat loop course, so I can expect decent times that actually mean something (ie - not downhill).
3. As part of my sponsorship of the Top of Utah Marathon, I’ve created a course map, so it will be one of the few 5K races out there that actually has a decent map that show the exact turns and the elevation profile.

Most of the maps I make are for relays, marathons, and half marathons; very few short races have the budget or real incentive for maps. However, there is one really nice thing about making a 5K map: scale. What is scale? Think of it as “zoom-factor”. Large-scale means “zoomed in”, small-scale means “zoomed out”. Scale can be represented by ratios, such as 1:6000 (large scale) or 1:100,000 (small scale). Since a 5K loop route does not take up much geographic space relative to a marathon or relay, I have the luxury of creating a large-scale map on a small page size (8.5×11″). This means that I get to show tremendous detail, including aerial photos and crisp turn locations. You just don’t get that on most small-scale maps.

From the elevation profile, it’s easy to see that the elevation does not change much during the race. There is a short, abrupt hill around Mile 1.6 (200 S to 100 S), and very subtle uphill on 300 N, and then a short, abrupt downhill near the finish. The last block (0.1 miles) is on an uphill, but who’s counting at that point?

But all this is getting nit-picky; the course can be more concisely described as relatively flat and fast. Although I am still building my base, I hope to at least challenge 16:00 for a finish time. Seeing 15:5x at the end would be great, but I could live with 16:1x as well. It’s hard to find concrete expectations. I do know that the first half should be faster than the second half of the race, due to topography, so I hope to hit 4:5x on the first mile, 5:0x on the second mile, and then see what I have for the end.

Should be fun! (and way easier than the Top of Utah Marathon).

I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m getting a little tired of racing every other week. For me, the Striders 10-miler this weekend is going to put the “training” back in Training Series. That what this is, right? A training series to get in shape for the Ogden Marathon.

I had a hard time recovering from the 10K, and spent much of the subsequent week trying to recover rather than punishing the pavement with vigorous training. I hope to avoid this trend with the 10-miler. The key is that the race itself needs to be a big threshold workout. This is difficult, because I will have to shut my mind off to its competitive urges early in the race. I think in the second half of the race, it will be good to “practice” racing and open it up a bit, perhaps running the last several miles at full tilt. But 4-5 miles of hard racing is a lot easier to recover from than 10 miles!

Hopefully this will pan out for me. I think that I got “real” racing out of my system with the 5K and 10K. It was great to come back from injury and race hard, but now I’ve gotten over some of the initial excitement of racing, and it’s time to buckle down, train hard, and complete some quality workouts in preparation for a marathon.

My goals for the 10-miler are:

1. Relax and run marathon-pace for the first half or so.
2. Improve my uphill running. Make sure no one runs away from me on ascents.
3. Race hard the last half. Practice race strategy and bury some people through hard surges.
4. Improve my finishing kick. Run a last mile that I can truly be proud of.
5. Average under 6:00/mile overall for the race.

As far as predictions, I think with all the hills, winners will be somewhere in the 57:30 range (5:45/mile). I also think a lot of other people will back off this race and focus on their training too. With this race out of the way, folks will have four solid weeks of quality training before the half marathon. Getting banged up on a difficult 10-miler would waste a week for recovery. That being said, for those willing to hang it all out, this may be a good race to make up ground on the competition, get some good circuit points, and perhaps win some money. As for me, I have to bite my cheek and force myself to think “big picture.”

Oh, and the course map with analysis? No time right now! Maybe tonight…

Until then, I’ll have to be content with the google map of the course. I will say that judging by this map and profile, it will be an easier course than the 5K or 10K. Note that the last few miles are identical to the second half of the 10K. Don’t let the lower vertical exaggeration of the longer profile fool you…it’s the same hill! But the first half of the race will be relatively easy, allowing people to get into a better rhythm.

TOU Marathon fans may be interested in checking out their new website, launched just yesterday. TOU’s old site was content-rich, but style-poor. The new site retains all of the content, but is much more attractive and easier to navigate. And thankfully it doesn’t waste our time with glitzy, content-poor Flash pages, like many other new websites.

New features to the TOU site are a message board (almost essential for any marathon these days!), and an ongoing series of podcasts. The podcasts in general are a great idea and will serve to provide extra information, tips, and stories to TOU web visitors.

It will be interesting to see the growth and competition at the 2007 TOU Marathon. Four factors should cause both the race to grow and for the competition to improve:

1. Meseret Defar running the TOU 5k last year gained world-wide attention for the event.
2. Last year two runners broke the U.S. Olympic Qualifying “B” standard (2:22). One was from Kenya, but more importantly, the other was a U.S. runner from Colorado. The “seal” has been broken!
3. This year is an Olympic Qualifying year, and TOU is one of the last eligible races to do so.
4. The race is well-organized, and the new, modern website should attract a larger volume of runners.

It should be a great year for TOU!

In honor of Worldwind v.1.4 being released last week, here’s a teaser for the upcoming Ogden Striders Series 10K race. The 10K race course is shown in yellow; click for bigger picture. More GIS fun to come in a few days…

Last night I had a little extra time, so I busted out the Strider Series 5K course map and profile in ArcGIS. For those unfamiliar with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a GIS will marry together spatial (geographic) information with a database backend that contains attributes for the spatial data (and for linked tabular data). Every feature included in a GIS map will have an associated table, and both spatial and tabular data can be used together (or alone) for subsequent analysis. Most people are familiar with Google Earth, which could be considered a very lightweight GIS program (but that’s stretching it). True GIS software has almost no limitations on what you can extract from the data.

Anyway, ArcGIS 9.2 allows users to made cool little time-series animations of data. What I did for the Ogden 5k was trick the program into thinking that race distance was actually time series, so the YouTube movie below shows an animated course and profile. This is a new ArcGIS feature that I’m pretty excited about and hope to use for future race contract work.

As you can see, the Ogden course is quite hilly, mostly uphill for the first half and then downhill for the second half. But how hilly? GIS allows me to quantify the gradient of the course, by creating elevation points at a fixed spacing (0.1 miles), and then extracting spot elevations from a 10-meter DEM. Most profile web services, such as the one found at the USATF Running Routes page, use 100-meter DEM’s, which are more generalized and less accurate that the 10-meter DEM’s that I download. After I run the analysis, I then import the resultant table into Excel to calculate gain/loss/gradient, and create an elevation profile graph. I’m generally not happy with Excel graphics, so I tend to copy and paste the profile graph into Adobe Illustrator to doll it up. Illustrator can be difficult to use at first, but is the premium tool for graphic arts, as well as cartography. My Illustrator profile is below (click on thumbnail for full resolution).

In a nutshell, the Ogden 5K has 325 feet of cumulative gain and 325 feet of cumulative loss (it’s a loop). Uphill and downhill gradients range between 2%-10%! Yikes! According to my Noakes calculator, this course will be about 30 seconds slower than running on a track. Thus, for those of you hoping to run 16:00, plan on something more like 16:30. As for myself, I’m hoping to end up with 16:45 or so, based on this information. We’ll see how it goes!

Well, I have officially signed up for the entire Striders Series, which starts with a 5k on Feb 10. After over 5 months of base training I’m happy to throw down in a race again, although I’m not looking forward to the pain of a 5k. In my opinion, half marathons and full marathons are worlds easier than 5k’s, which I why I’ve only ran two 5k’s in the last three years!

I did a 2-mile time trial today to get some sort of idea of what I can race a 5k at. I was hoping to hold 5:00-miles comfortably, but I pretty much went into oxygen debt after one 5:00 mile; the second mile was in the 5:20’s. So I’m about as fast as I was in high school. Great. But I have to keep reminding myself that I missed most of 2006 and still need many months to refine both my speed and endurance. It will come. I can hope for sub-16:30 at Ogden, but it will take some work to get to sub-15:30, which is where I want to be by Draper Days.

The little 2-mile time trial was enough to get quite a burn in my lungs and remind myself what the 5k will bring: lots and lots of pain. I’ll need to buckle down and remember how to push myself and truly “race”. I didn’t really push it at all during the last half mile of the time trial, rather I just gave in to the protests of my muscles. Pushing through that pain is key to racing, and can make a 15-30 second difference in a 5k race. Hopefully this experience today jogged my muscle memory (pun intended).

Another factor to consider is that the Striders 5k course has a pretty big hill for the first half of the race. This will slow times considerably, even with the subsequent downhill. Going out hard will be suicide.

It’s nice that Striders made a quick little map and profile on the USATF site, but being a map nerd, I intend to make my own maps and profiles using higher resolution data for each race I do this year. I will post each map and profile on this blog to showcase what Marathon GIS does, so stay tuned. Once I have good elevation statistics, I will be able to calculate my proper pace for each race segment based on total elevation gained and lost. The general idea is that energy expenditure on uphills is about twice the energy savings on downhills of the same gradient (The Lore of Running, by Noakes). It’s a fun formula to play with, anyway, and makes for a good GIS application.

So despite the upcoming 5k being inevitably painful, I’m still looking forward to mixing it up with everyone. Who else is throwing their hat into the Striders Series?