The perfect first half-marathon
Well perhaps, not perfect. It’s not like I won or anything, but the race was exactly as I imagined it would be. Here’s a brief race report:
The race is called the Tuks Alumini Legends 2008, which is held organized by my university - The University of Pretoria. The race started from the Waterkloof Airforce Base. I was about 15mins early and when I came around one of the final corners… surprise! Huge pile-up! Ended up being 15mins late and had to start with the 10km walkers… the shame!! No only joking. I struggled to keep up with those frontrunners… or walkers rather. Amazing how fast those buggers actually are.
I hoped that we would run on the airfields, but instead we just ran down to a nearby dual carriage road and just ran up and down the damn thing. Boooorrrrring!! Sheesh, I can do that any day of the week. Why don’t the spice things up a bit? Anyhow, moving on.
So I decided to keep my HR in zone 3 during the whole race and perhaps gun it towards the end. I warmed up for the first 2kms. I made up good time during the first 5km. It was all downhill, so I was able to stay below 6:00/km. After a turn at 5, we ran uphill for 4km. It was hard to not run faster, but at least I didn’t have to walk.
Things flatten out over the next 8-9km. I found the running to be quite easy up to the 15-16km mark. The left knee started to feel a bit swollen and sore, but luckily it didn’t get any worse. In spite of my legs being a bit tired, I took the pace up a bit for the final 2km. It was mostly uphill, so my average speed stayed more or less the same.
In conclusion, the race was just as I expected (apart from the route). Not easy, but far from tough. I expected the first 10 to be easy, the next 7-8km to be slow but steady, and final parts to hurt a bit more. I don’t think road running is my thing though. Can’t see myself doing many more of these. Perhaps it’ll become a bit more fun if I’m able to increase my tempo a bit.
Workout:
- Type: Run
- Date: 05/31/2008
- Time: 07:00:00
- Total Time: 2:13:52.00
- Average Heart rate: 162
- Max Heart rate: 179
- Calories: 838
- Distance: 21.18 km
- Average Pace: 6:19.35/km
- Ascent: 117 m
Filed under: Race Report, Run
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Trail run Thursdays
I couldn’t resist going for a run again and damn it was good! I stayed in Zone 3 and again had to walk at times, because the ticker wouldn’t stay below 164. My knees felt much much better today. So I’m a bit more optimistic about Saturday’s half-marathon.
I have no real strategy planned, but I’m going to use the first 15-20 mins to warm up a bit. Therafter I’ll keep in Zone 3 and perhaps gun the last 15-20 mins if the knees and legs allows.
Workout:
- Type: Run
- Date: 05/29/2008
- Time: 17:30:00
- Total Time: 00:19:37.00
- Average Heart rate: 160
- Max Heart rate: 171
- Calories: 203
- Distance: 2.51 km
- Average Pace: 7:48.75/km
- Ascent: 103 m
Filed under: Run, Trail Running
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Disconcerting run
Today was my first run in a while. Also the first time I’ve tried staying in Zone 2, and man it was hard. I had to walk up little pink puffy baby hills. Blegh! Not my style! Anyhow, I swallowed my ‘pride’ (aka stupidity) and walked up those bad boys… After 1.5km my knees started feeling slightly sore and swollen. I decided to kick the session. My injury was clearly not gone yet. A bit worrying since I have that half-marathon this weekend.
Workout:
- Type: Run
- Date: 05/28/2008
- Time: 17:00:00
- Total Time: 00:17:20.00
- Average Heart rate: 142
- Max Heart rate: 157
- Calories: 110
- Distance: 2.4 km
- Average Pace: 7:13.21/km
- Ascent: 37 m
Filed under: Run
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Dark & Dirty night ride
Went for my second night ride with the Dark & Dirty guys. These rides are more social and the focus is on fun rather than training. Good thing too, because I’m still suffering from fatigue. Fatigue or I’m getting sick, but I’m quite sure it’s fatigue.
I feel like a bit of a pansy. I did three different races (MTB, AR and trail run) the previous three weekends and it proved to be too much for my body. After this week’s Polar HR workshop, I know what I’m doing wrong during training, so it isn’t any wonder I’m feeling fatigued. But still… I feel like my body should have been able to keep up. Three races isn’t that tough.
Anyway, I’ll work on my base and build, and then I’ll be able to gun it again!
(P.S. The total ride time was closer to 3 hours, but just to keep track of my actual training time, I’m logging 1:30.)
Workout:
- Type: Cycle
- Date: 05/22/2008
- Time: 19:00:00
- Total Time: 1:30:00.00
- Average Heart rate: 135
- Max Heart rate: 170
- Calories: 806
- Distance: 26.48 km
- Average Speed: 17.65 kmph
- Ascent: 240 m
Filed under: Cycle, Mountain Biking, Night Ride
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Build a bigger base buddy
I attended a Polar workshop held by Running Inn tonight. It’s incredible how much I learned! The presentation by Gideon Joubert was brilliant.
I was under the impression that I pretty much knew the proper way to train… Turns out I’ve been getting it all wrong. I now sit with an injured knee and feeling very fatigued.
Now have to force myself to recover and start with a clean slate and start working on my base. Also need to reconsider doing Saturday’s race and even perhaps my half-marathon next weekend.
I’ll share what I’ve learned in a proper article. Just need to get all my notes together.
Filed under: General
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Strength Training - 0.3 hours - 05/20/2008
Workout:
- Type: Strength Training
- Date: 05/20/2008
- Time: 21:00:00
- Total Time: 00:15:00.00
- Calories: 55
Filed under: Strength Training
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Strength Training - 0.8 hours - 05/19/2008
Workout:
- Type: Strength Training
- Date: 05/19/2008
- Time: 21:00:00
- Total Time: 00:45:00.00
- Calories: 165
Filed under: Strength Training
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Daily cycling commute
The second day commuting. Things went a bit more smooth than the first day.
At this stage, packing my bag is the biggest time waster. So I left a towel and some shower stuff at work. That should shave a few minutes.
Can’t really think of other areas where I can save time… Unless I want to keep clothes at work, but I’m not sure I want to start doing that yet. Hmmm… I suppose I can just pedal harder. Sounds like a good plan!
Workout:
- Type: Cycle
- Date: 05/19/2008
- Time: 17:00:00
- Total Time: 00:39:31.00
- Average Heart rate: 139
- Max Heart rate: 172
- Calories: 512
- Distance: 12.99 km
- Average Speed: 19.72 kmph
- Max Speed: 58.7 kmph
- Ascent: 245 m
Filed under: Cycle
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Adventure race at Konka Camps, Magaliesburg
I did an adventure race this weekend with team mates Cobus and Gert. It was held at a pretty cool location. Most of the area was bushveld with beautiful mountains as a backdrop. The transition area was next to a river, so it was really quite idyllic.
We started off with a 3km running section and obstacle course. The run was a bit short, but quite fast, so I was happy with it not being that long.
The second leg was a 13km mountain bike section. Again, a much shorter section than I was expecting, but I wasn’t too distraught about it. The first 4-5km had a total ascent of around 300m and the most part of it was rocks. Absolutely terrible mtbing. I hated the organizers for a while there. After that I started liking them a bit more when they gave us some sweet twisty downhills with a few jumps along the way.
Finally, we did a short running and archery section. The run wasn’t anything worth writing home, but I loved the idea of combining it with the archery. The shooting was quite easy in the end and we cruised home.
Final thoughts. A pretty cool race. We finished the 17.6km race in 2:01, or something like that. We lost 30mins on cycle repairs, so I don’t really care about the finishing time. The venue was brilliant. The race too short and the first part of the mtbing very VERY frustrating. Would I do it again? Only if they get rid of some of the rocky sections and increase the distance.
Filed under: Adventure Racing, Race Report
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AR: Trail run and target shooting
The third and final leg was a short running and archery section. You ran half a kilometre and had to take a shot at a target. If you miss, you had to run a penalty lap around a rugby/football field. How cool is that!? I took a shot and luckily got the arrow quite close to the bull. So no penalty lap!! Whoop whoop. We ran back down to the finish, doing the final kilometre and archery in 6mins. Not bad.
Workout:
- Type: Run
- Date: 05/17/2008
- Time: 10:53:00
- Total Time: 00:06:06.00
- Average Heart rate: 168
- Max Heart rate: 177
- Calories: 46
- Distance: 1.02 km
- Average Pace: 5:58.92/km
- Ascent: 11 m
Filed under: Adventure Racing, Race Report, Run
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