I made a little card and kept it in my pocket where I had written the pace I wanted to run each mile. The race started and my goal for the first mile was 8:13. I ran 7:44. Ooops. With my heart rate monitor I got the lap time at every mile marker. Some of the markers were not exactly in the right place. I could tell because the pace was quite a bit off sometimes. I deleted the questionable mile markers off my heart rate monitor later when I looked at the data. The graph of my heart rate is here:
Here is the table of my planned paces and how I did.
Mile - planned pace > actual pace
1 - 8:13 > 7:44
2 - 8:13 > 7:57
3 - 8:08 > 7:59
4 - 8:04 > 7:53
5 - 7:54 > 7:53
6 - 7:49 > 7:52
7 - 7:45 > 7:52
8 - 7:45 > 7:37
9 - 7:40 > 7:38
10 - 7:40 > 7:37
11 - 7:40 > 7:43
12 - 7:40 > 7:43
13 - 7:40 > 7:15 (pace includes last 0.1 mile)
.1 - 0:47
It took a few miles to get settled into my plan. From the 5th through 12th miles I was really right on target. You can see that the 13th mile was way off plan. I knew by then (mile 12) my experiment was successful. Up ahead of me in the race was a large group that I was itching to pass. I hit my lap button and put it into high gear. There was little chance of me crashing and burning at that point. I passed a very large group and kept on going fast and continued my fast pace up the last hill. The final 100 meters I picked it up into a sprint and sniped a few more during that stretch. I was sure my gas tank wasn't even half empty at the end of this race. I'm feeling fairly confident about meeting my 3:27 goal at Fargo in May. I have 16 weeks to go.
My final time was 1:41:26 (according to the online results) so I made my Twin Cities Marathon Wave-1 qualifier! Woo-hoo!
Other notes:
The weather was perfect at around 20 degrees, overcast, and very light snow falling.
I met Julie B. and chatted with her before and after the race. I was happy to finally meet her.
My friend Dave was on the course cheering me on around mile 5. I learned that if you hear your name being shouted, someone may be shouting it at YOU. :-) I finally whipped my head around and gave him a wave. On my way back I ran over near him and he gave me a GU. That was nice! Thanks Dave!
Around mile 7 I heard someone yell "Mark". Since a few miles earlier I ignored my friend Dave, this time I decided to wave at the person and smile. Of course I didn't know her. I then asked the guy about 10 feet in front of me if his name was Mark. It was. He said we must be the Marks (Marx) brothers. :-)
Oh yeah. I forgot where I parked. What building did I park under? I didn't know. What parking ramp level? I didn't know. I wandered two ramps and various levels on both ramps with no luck. I finally decided to go out on the street, find where I drove in, and walk the same path I drove to park. That worked!
I hope to run this again next year.
--Mark
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