Des News 10K today. I enjoy this race because it’s so competitive, and I got a full order of competition today! Definitely both the deepest and top-heavy Des News field I’ve run in. It’s sick how fast people ran today, but sick in a good way. It’s great to have a race like this right here in Utah. Too bad it’s all downhill, as no one outside the state gives the race any respect. But it’s a great race.

Anyway, Stacy, Seth, and I drove down to SLC on Friday afternoon. Went early so that we could take our new (used) Volvo to the dealer (only dealer in the state) to do some magical dealer-only work (ie - turn off the air bag light). Managed to escape only spending $110 for that and a few other things.

We then shacked up at the Skyline Inn on Foothill Dr., just a couple miles from the start line. Ordered in pizza for dinner and sat around and gorged ourselves on TV (we have not have tv reception at home since we built our deck–no big loss). Went on to sleep my worst night of sleep ever. Absolutely terrible beds there, plus the room was too warm (weak AC). Wished I was in nice, cool Cache Valley. Got probably 3 hours of sleep, but I was ready to get up at 4:30AM, simply to get our of that dang bed. To top off the terrible bed, the room had no coffee machine. Even our hotel in Provo, a stone’s throw from BYU, had a flippin’ coffee machine. Oh well. My nervous system was pretty amp’ed for this race, so I was quite wide awake and ready to go anyway. But it would have helped with “other things”.

Ate a banana and a couple mini-Cliff bars, and headed out to the course. Ran there, so it was about a 2 or 3-mile warmup. Conditions were cooler than I thought it might be, which was good, but still quite a bit warmer than what I’m used to. When I turned up Wakara, I noticed that we would have a favorable wind direction for that part of the race. Perhaps that helped make the race times so fast. I’m sure the nice temperatures helped too.

Took a potty stop, then warmed up a little more, did some strides, sat in the grass, and generally wasted time. Listened to a guy cuss up a storm because he realized he forgot his iPOD. Totally ruined his day. If you hate running that much, then don’t do it! This guy was angry beyond belief, though, probably one of the same people who threw a fit on Ragnar’s facebook page a few weeks ago.

Just before the race started, I bumped into an old teammate from Calvin College, Kris Koster. Kris was a freshman when I was senior. He went on to be a multi-All American, and ran around 30-flat on the track in the 10K, and under 14:30 in the 5K too. He has family in Utah, and was here for a funeral, and jumped in Des News at 5PM last night. Pretty cool to see him after 9 years, and it definitely made my day (and helped my race, see below).

Chatted with a few others, and weaseled my way into the start. I somehow ended up 3 rows deep, and couldn’t get any further up, being a 125-lb weakling and all. So I settled for 3 rows back, behind all the kids, including an 11-year-old whose mom personally insisted be up there.

They started the race right on time (this race is always very well-organized), and we roared out. Always a fast start, this Des News 10K. I quickly found myself in about 30th place or so. I got out from the crowd and wormed my way up, and was probably in about 20th by the turn onto Wakira. I couldn’t believe how far up the leaders were, and how far back I was from my “peer group”. I could see Jeff and Brad O. way the heck up there, and Seth Pilkington a little ahead of them. Leaders were almost out of site by a half mile. I figured that I was just having a tank of a race and going really slow. First mile split was 4:31. Okaaay. My goal pace for the first two miles for 4:35-4:38. I was not slow; everyone else was just extremely fast. Hopefully they would all pay.

I started running down the people that went out too hard. Knowing that my first mile was 4:31, I pretty much figured everyone went out too hard, and I was destined to win. Well, I didn’t really think that, but I figured a lot of guys would come back to me, including Jeff and Brad. One-by-one I picked people off the next few miles. Mile 2 was 4:37 (9:08 for 2 miles). The pace felt quite hard (never felt relaxed at any point), and the downhill was hurting my back. I actually accelerated more and gained more ground on the flatter sections and on the uphill sections.

Mile 3 was tougher than I remember, and actually had quite a bit of uphill. Where did that come from? But again, I gained the most ground on the uphill, so although painful, it was good for my race. I also noticed a guy in dark maroon coming back to me, and I immediately recognized the distinct stride with the high leg kick: Kris Koster, my old college teammate. It’s funny how you can recognize a stride after all those years. I was gaining on Kris, and he was the link between myself and the next pack ahead of him (Jeff, Brad, etc). Mile 3 was 4:50 (13:59 for 3 miles).

I was targeting 4:45 for the next couple miles, and then Mile 6 is always a death-march. Not that you can really “target” much at Des News. You more just load and go, and hope for the best. It’s not a cerebral race. I caught Kris during the 4th mile. “Pack it up” I said to him as I pulled along side him. Got a lot of warm fuzzy college memories. Calvin College XC was well-known in DIII for its pack running. It’s what gave us our strength, and how we won championships.  I ended up running with Kris the rest of the way, and we reeled in people together. Hit Mile 4 in 4:44 (18:43), so back to an ideal pace.

We made our turn onto the parade route, and of course by this point things were very uncomfortable. I really dislike any race shorter than 15K at this point of my running career. Too much pain, too much turnover, too much breathing, not enough rhythm. Kris and I continued to work together. Right around Mile 5, Kris looked up and said, “I lift my eyes up to the hills,” a reference to Psalm 121 “

¹ I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?

 ² My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.”

Words of encouragement to me and also a reminder to enjoy God’s creation that we were running in. Laboring but spurred on, we reeled in and passed a guy in red, and Jeff, Brad O., and Jon Kotter were coming back, and it was inevitable that we would catch them. Mile 5 was 4:45 (23:29), perfect.

I don’t remember, but I think we finally caught Jeff & company with about 1 mile left. I sat on the pack for a few moments to gather some strength (I’ve been feeling pretty gassed since Mile 2!), and then made a move on the inside before the turn onto 900 S. Passed everyone, but then I couldn’t finish deal, and we all stayed packed up. Made the turn onto 900 S, and started the uphill section to the finish. This part is always hard, and this year was no different. The work I’d done the last 3 miles to catch everyone was definitely set in, and I no pop.

Eventually Jeff, Brad, and Kotter all passed me back, and then ground me up the hill. I sat and hoped for a good kick. Ugghh. Not feeling the fire either. Wish I had done some 10K training, as I promised myself that I would, but the last month was just miles and tempos, nothing hard. Had a little gap from the pack at Mile 6, but was 5:05 (28:34), which actually is my best Des News mile 6 split, so I shouldn’t complain. Was 2 seconds beyond my peer group that I needed to beat, so still within striking range!

Unfortunately I didn’t strike, and those guys somehow put another 3 seconds or so on me in the last 0.2. I guess Brad is a sub-1:50 800m guy, so that doesn’t help (I ran 2:02, almost 10 years ago), but there’s still no reason it couldn’t have gone the other way for me. Kris had fallen back from my a little bit on 900 S (the uphill at altitude probably hurt him more, being a flatlander), so I remained ahead of him. Saw the clock for the first time right before I finished and realized that was going to kill my time goal of sub-30:00, and would be in the 29:30s. I had no idea. So that was good! Last 0.2 was 64s.

Was glad to be done, glad to hit my time goal, and glad to beat my course best by 49 seconds. Official chip time was 29:38, gun time was 29:39. I’ll go with chip time here. Starting 3 rows back did not help, although running 4:30 for the first mile (opposed to 4:20) probably did help.

That said, I was a little shocked to get my bum handed to me on a platter en-route to a 29:38. 3 years ago that time would have been good for 3rd overall and 2nd Utahn; this year it was good for 13th overall and ?? Utahn. Not top 3, that’s for sure. But it was all very exciting racing, and fun to work my way up in a good field like that, to recognize people as rivals and reel them in over the duration of a race, and to find an old teammate and work together with him (running with Kris was definitely the highlight of my day, by far).

Another positive was that we were all reeling in Teren Jameson over the last couple miles. Never came into contact with him, but I’m always glad just to have him visible. He ended up about 15 seconds ahead. He is running the TOU Half, so perhaps home-field will give me the advantage I need to finally slay the dragon? Jeff has owned me this year at the shorter distances (5K/10K). Perhaps we need to race another half marathon? TOU Half, Jeff? But I least I had to opportunity to make the pass in this race, whereas at Law Day I couldn’t even made contact! And thankfully  I don’t have to race any more 5K’s or 10K’s for a year or two or three. Maybe ever.

So in a nutshell, it was a PR effort, and a big course best. Great time and good progress compared to my 2007 time. I think I am on track for where I need to be to make a legitimate Trials shot. I get better as I go out in distance, so I don’t put too much stock in 10Ks (especially downhill ones), but I have every reason to be encouraged because I can compare to my ‘07 time. The big negative was not being able to finish out yet another race. Although I have not been falling apart at the end, my kick and my killer instinct has not been there at any race this year. I believe that more than 50% of the problem is just attitude and emotional fatigue from the race. True the lack of speedwork didn’t help, but most of it is mental. It can be improved.

After the race, I talked with Kris and a few other people for a while, then cooled down back to my hotel with Kris and Teren. Felt pretty good during the cooldown, and worked out most of my calf and quad soreness during the 4-mile run. Hopefully I’ll feel good on Monday…for the start of marathon training! Everything I’ve done so far this winter, spring, and summer, has led up to this point. Just get me to 14 weeks before the marathon, healthy and fit. And that’s where I am. The race is Nov. 6. I am healthy. I am fit. Just need the specific training, and to endure the next 3 months.

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.

Raceday is almost upon us, so time for some maps and pre-race analysis. After looking at the online map for the 10K course, I was not encouraged about the pain-factor of this race. From the email I got from Striders:

“It will be an epic 10K run, we hope you like it.”

Yeah, I bet! The 5K was pretty epic, and even fun, in kind of a sick, twisted sort of way.

Making my own maps did nothing to help these sentiments. One of the benefits of using a GIS-based approach for mapping is that you can overlay multiple layers, which allows for direct visual comparison between two data themes. In this case I overlaid the Striders 5K course from two weeks ago with the 10K course. Doing this allows us to see where the 10K goes relative to the 5K, and also lets us assess how much worse the 10K will be!

Of course, a course map for these particular races would be virtually meaningless without an elevation layer! Overlaying a digital elevation model (DEM) accomodates planimetric visualization of all the climbs and descents…all without a profile graph. This is one reason why I tend to bash Google Map mashups, which we are seeing with increasing frequency as “official” race course maps. Yes, Google Maps and Google Earth are quick and handy, they display roads and aerial photography quite well, and they accomodate some custom data. But even for simple maps they are lacking in several major areas: 1) No elevation layers; 2) Poor cartography; 3) Commercial-use limitations and map ownership limitations. They are referred to as “Google Map hacks” for a reason. I’ll discuss points 2 and 3 in other posts, for today I’m only interested in elevation.

The GIS map posted below is very simple: it only shows the 5K route (red dash), the 10K route (solid yellow), 10K mile and tenth-mile markers, and a shaded elevation map. I did not have time to do any real cartography (ie roads, labeling, etc.), so just a “down and dirty” map for today. I left out aerial photography to focus the eye on the true point of the map: showing elevation, which grades from green (low elevation) to red (high elevation). See the legend for details, but the elevation colors change in 25-ft increments. Click on the map image to download a full .pdf file.

We can see immediately that the 10K course reaches a higher elevation (>5100 ft) than the 5K course from two weeks ago. Yikes! We’ve got a heck of a climb between Mile 2.2 and 3.1, but from there on we’ll have a very fast downhill (aside from a wimpy little climb just after Mile 5.0).

My take on this race is similar to that of the 5K: the race can be lost in the first half, and won in the second half. A relatively conservative start will ensure success and plenty of leg pop for making a mad surge on the downhill section. But if you go into debt in the first half, you may be out of gas by the time the course becomes favorable for speed.

Even though one can glean everything they need to know from the elevation map itself, I’ve sketched up a very quick and dirty profile and stats for those of you who must have one. Note that the 5K profile is overlaid on the 10K profile for direct comparison (another handy feature of custom mapping vs. a web service or Google Map). I calculated roughly 680 ft of total gain and drop for the 10K. This is just slightly more than twice that of the 5K. Gradients are very similar to those that we experienced in the 5K (unfortunately), although some parts will definitely be less brutal on the knees. I didn’t have the time or desire to actually calculate gradients and post them on the profile like last time, but I think the graphic itself says it all (click on image to enlarge profile).

Since the total elevation gain/loss is pretty much twice that of the Striders 5K, I think simply plugging your Striders 5K time into a standard race calculator, such as RunWorks or Sasha’s, and not worrying about calibrating for elevation, will get you pretty close. Based on my 5K time from two weeks ago, my projected 10K time would be 34:27. So that will be my 2nd-tier goal time to beat. If I’ve experienced fitness gains over the last two weeks, and/or just bust off a great race, my 1st-tier goal is sub-34:00. I predict that the winner (assuming the same cast of runners as last time) will be somewhere between 33:40 and 33:55.

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…