Tag Archives: RTB

Rotorua marathon and a long overdue update

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It’s been quite a while since I last updated what I’ve been up to since running the Wellington Round the Bays half marathon in February. So here is a quick summary of what I’ve been up to in terms of my training preparation for the 50th Rotorua Marathon since that event. Rotorua Marathon is actually only 6 sleeps away on 3rd May 2014.

March and April 2014

After Wellington Round the Bays I was straight back into full training mode with some solid back to back weeks of 100kms plus of running. This meant a total of 10 weeks to do some strength endurance based work as well as targeted speed work to be marathon ready. The highlight of March was a solid team effort at the Tarawera Ultramarathon in Rotorua where my team placed 12th in the relay of 70km. My buddies Nick, Aaron and Daniel who are part of my club did really great in tough conditions on the day. The course was altered at the last minute due to a tropical cyclone that was coming towards the forest where the original trail went through. In the end everyone who participated had a great time. This is certainly a great event to be part of in the New Zealand trail running calendar. I got to meet Vera (aka Supergeneric girl!) BONUS!

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Team Lost in the Woods charging through the trails of Tarawera.

The weekend was spent running in some of the best trails in and around Rotorua. I also got to meet Sage Canaday (DOUBLE BONUS) who is now the two time winner of the Tarawera Ultra marathon.

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Meeting Sage Canaday in the Redwoods

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Great times with great running buddies

My friends who did the Ultra Distance kicked ass with some of them being in the top 10 of both the long and short courses.

After Tarawera it was pretty much back to a lot of training involving some solid mileage and tempo and interval work. I also included a 6 week block of strength conditioning twice a week.

10 km Personal Best (Road Race)

On 5th of April (incidentally also my 40th birthday) I ran a 10km club race for our running club Wellington Scottish Athletics. My aim was to run a steady conservative effort and I was not aiming to go all out. Somehow this day I felt really good and strong and my conservative effort actually felt pretty steady and easy which resulted in me shaving off a full 2 mins off my previous 10km race time and running a 40:22 – 10km race. This was a great indication that my marathon training was paying off. Not only could I maintain avg 4min per/km pace I felt really good afterwards and didn’t need a long time for recovery.

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Racing in Wellington Scottish colors. Waterfront 10km club race in April.

Overall I feel I have done a pretty good chunk of training and my average mileage has significantly increased from last year. If any of you are on Strava check out my profile and connect.

Easter/Anzac Weekend

Last week was a long weekend (Easter and Anzac) which provided a great opportunity to travel and explore some great trails. Although I should have actually cut back on mileage and gone into a taper I ended up running in some great trails in Tongariro National Park and Kinloch in Taupo. This included the following trails.

  • Old Coach Road from Horopito to Ohakune and back (25kms)
  • Whakapapaiti Trails in National Park (14kms)
  • Tongariro Northern Circuit (46kms) – one of the Great Walks of New Zealand
  • Huka Falls to Aratiatia trail (10kms)
  • Kinloch W2K Trail out and back (22kms)

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With this amount of running I am taking this week before Rotorua very easy and resting for the Rotorua Marathon. As usual watch out for the post race update next week and I am hoping that it will be a positive one – but it’s a Marathon and no matter what you have done what you feel on the day and during a marathon is what makes the difference. I am staying positive that I will be able to run a great marathon. The place is going to be buzzing with over 9000 people participating in the full and half marathon distances.

 

 

 

2014 Round the Bays Half Marathon recap

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This is somewhat of a delayed post about my last half marathon I ran on 23rd of February. Last year I ran the same half marathon in 1:33:55. Since then I had also run a PB time of 1:32 in September 2013. Since this was my first major race for 2014 I had a goal of running under 1:30. Most of my training leading up to the event has been on preparation on one of my goal marathons in May the Rotorua marathon. So this race was a good time to do a ‘time trial’ of how my training was progressing. At the same time I was not prepared to go all out and then lose time recovering for two or more weeks as I have only about 8 weeks left to the Rotorua marathon in May.

The day was pretty good weather wise, apart from a slight northwesterly wind it was a great summer day for an 8am start. However the race was delayed till 8:15am because the organisers were clearing some vehicles that had ventured into the closed part of the course.

Round the Bays 2014

At the start with Brendon and Yulia

My race plan was to run pretty even splits of 4:15min per Km pace so I will end up around 1:29 and getting under the 1:30 mark There were pace groups for 1:25, 1:30 and 1:45. So I was just slightly ahead of the 1:30 pacer and the plan was to hold pace with him from around the after the first 5km marker. In hindsight I should have held back a little bit. This year the race also introduced a 10k race and the start area was a bit hectic with 10k and half marathon runners all starting at the same time. I think that a staggered start would have been much better for all runners involved. This created bit of a rush and some confusion amongst a few inexperienced runners.

Anyways we started off and as usual there was a rush of the ‘mad dashers’ who usually end up paying the price around halfway. The first 7k splits were pretty good but a wee bit faster in some ways. Splits from start to 7k point were 4:14, 4:11, 4:06, 4:14, 4:06, 4:16, 4:15. At around the 7km point was the turn back for 10km runners and this became bit of a choke point for faster 10k runners coming back into the mass of the runners who were heading past the turn point. The next 7kms had a bit of head wind. I shadowed behind a few runners including the 1:30 pace group. Splits to the 14km mark were 4:23, 4:30, 4:14, 4:19, 4:11, 4:10, 4:11. I was still feeling pretty fresh around 14km marker and I broke a another PB of distance run in 1hrs at the 14km marker. So my pacing was spot on. This is where things got interesting. So what had happened was that the turning point was a bit off than what it should have been and thus making the actual distance about 600-700m longer. I knew straight away that this was the case as I had done the course before. So at this point I had two choices go out a bit harder and try and make up the time/ground to still officially break my 1:30 goal or maintain the same pace (which was feeling pretty good) and not push too hard. I did some quick calculations in my head and decided to stick with the same even pace. My rationale was that I had proven that I am able to comfortably maintain the pace and am actually running faster than I have run before. It was a sign that my marathon training was indeed working. The next final 7km splits were as follows: 4:13, 4:35 (slowed down at a drink station than I anticipated), 4:16, 4:19, 4:20, 4:08, 4:12) and then the added bonus of an almost an extra 1km in 4:22. The total distance actually came to 22kms instead of the standard 21.1km of a half marathon. The organisers officially acknowledged that the course was measured correctly but the volunteers who were sent to the turning point made an error in judgement and placed the turning point too far in that what was marked. There was no adjustments made to results. Officially my time was recorded as 1:33 (which was the same as last year). I actually crossed the 21.1km distance according to my garmin watch in 1:29:50 thus unofficially getting a PB. In any case I was pretty happy with the net result knowing that I am in fact running faster and more economically than before and on track to a good marathon in 8 weeks time in May!

Thanks for reading.

 

Wellington RTB Half Marathon recap

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As I sit here and write this I am pretty stoked on how today went! Most importantly I am pleased that my training (self coaching) was just right to get me to achieve today’s personal best time of 1:33:55 (unofficial time) 1:33:54 (official time). In any case I broke 1:35 which was my primary goal! If you were following my previous updates on the 5 week race specific plan I did for RTB head over here and have a look.
Just to give you all a recap here are my previous half marathon times from previous years.

What this shows is with the correct level of training (gradual) you can continue to improve overtime. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts I increased my mileage gradually and my main goal is to be relatively injury free so I can run pretty much all through out the year.

So how did today go? When I woke up around 5:30am first thing I did was check the weather forecast! I live pretty much in central Wellington so looking outside I could see the bays and water was pretty calm and still, It was just perfect. Not much wind and not sunny with a slight southerly breeze! Then I had my usual pre-event breakfast – 2 Crumpets with Peanut butter & a banana. That’s it. No coffee! I usually don’t drink coffee for 24hours if I am doing an event. This BTW makes it all the better when you finally have a coffee after the event!

Put on my running gear got a bag packed for post race and off I went to the start leaving home at 7:30. For this run I decided I not to have music with me – I was more ficused on maintaining my own rhythm and decided to ditch the music (not the first time I’ve done this). Just as I was walking along the Waterfront I saw Hinano was already there and she was warming up! I gave a high-five to her as I passed (I was semi-jogging) and said good luck. Checked in my bag and saw a few of my club runners and chatted for a bit. Then did the final all important pit-stop before starting a slow jog to get my legs moving. I don’t go into a full warm up routine if I am running anything more than 10k. Just a light jog and some easy stretches.

I chatted with a few of the other club runners and I saw Dave (fast runner usually about 1:20 PB) was one of the pacers for the 1:40 group. Just had a general chit chat and said to him “Well, Dave, this would probably be the only time I’d have a chance to beat you eh!” 🙂

Headed over to the start and another of our senior club runners Glen was there, he was aiming to run 1:35 so I said great! Let’s pace each other! There was about an 8min delay at the start and you could see everyone was anxious to get away. Glen and I were just in between the 1:30 pacer and the 1:40 pacer. My aim was to stick to 4:30ish pace no matter what. The race started and off we all went!

There was a massive surge and a whole bunch of people flew past me and Glen in the first km. We were like what the hell? Surely we are NOT that slow? First Km split was 4:22 pretty easy going and I was not going to fall into the trap of going too fast. Second was in 4:24, the third in 4:19 and we go to 5k in 21min 50secs – so far so good we were into a pretty good rhythm. By about the 7km mark we were passing a lot of people and guess what.. they were the one’s who went out like bats out of hell at the start and struggling a bit to keep up the pace. By around the 9km mark I was into a very good rhythm and kept going around the 4:25ish pace which was exactly what I wanted. I had one Gu Energy Gel with me so I took some of that with water as we passed the next water station. I passed 10k marker just shy of my 10k PB! At this stage Glen had fallen back a bit.

About the 11k point some of the Elite runners were heading back! I yelled out encouragement to a few of them that I knew from our club. I passed 13.7kms in 60mins which was also the turnaround point!

After 14km marker I was running at max and fighting the usual pains that comes with running at max. I just kept telling myself that It was only a another 1km to go and so forth! By the 17th Km my left leg felt really stiff and my ITB started hurting this was bearable but my pace dropped to around the 4:30ish mark. I kept pushing and by 19th Km mark Glen caught up to me again! I just ignored the pain and got right behind him and upped my pace. The last 2km was pretty hard and painful but also good because I pushed and was able to run the last Km in my fastest split of 4min 16 to a sprint finish with Glen just slightly ahead of me! Final time : 1hr 33mins 55secs (unofficial) with an average pace of 4min 23secs resulting in a new PB shaving off about 4mins from my previous best time!

RTB Time 2013

RTB Time 2013 on my Garmin

2013 RTB Official Time

2013 RTB Official Time

Looking at my splits here is what happened. It was pretty even and my strategy to try for even splits worked well. I am glad I went through enough tempo runs in my training as well as my almost weekly 5k races. These are all important in training.

RTB 2013 Splits

RTB 2013 Splits

So all in all a great day and pretty happy with how everything worked. Next week it’s going to be an easy week and I am looking forward to just hitting some of the local trails and do some easy running! Next weekend 23rd Feb (Saturday) I am running with the Round Lake Taupo relay with the Wellington Running Meetup group. I am looking forward to that which will be pretty fun!

After this event my main goal is the Wellington Marathon! This is essentially what I’ve been building up for the last three years. I am creating a 17 week training plan starting from 4th March 2013 leading upto 23rd June 2013! In between I’ll be doing a few other events as well. Check out my Races and Places page for these!

Happy running!