Race Recap: The Belews Lake Tri- er- Duathlon

On Friday morning I was in a bit of a panic. The aero wheels I had borrowed for the race were great, but my running / cycling / swim buddy had left out a key component: The cassette (the gears on the rear wheel). I could use the cassette from my wheel but I didn't have the tool to do that. My buddy suggested taking it to the local bike shop. But the more I thought about it, the more I wasn't sure I wanted to use the wheels. The forecast for Saturday's Belews Lake International Triathlon was for temperatures in the low 40s, with winds of 18 miles per hour, gusting to over 30. Aero wheels make a bike more unstable in any conditions, and gusting winds make the task of handling bike even more challenging, because they give it a bigger profile in the crosswinds. I decided to stick with my tried-and-true wheels. That turned out to be an excellent decision.

Fast forward to Saturday morning. As I left my house, the thermometer read 37 degrees. I didn't notice much wind, but it wasn't really forecast to pick up until 9 or 10 am -- right when I'd be getting on my bike in the race. Sure enough, when I arrived at Belews Lake 90 minutes later, the wind had already picked up. I wore my down jacket to the race check-in. At the body-marking station, racers stripped off several layers and left their clothes in heaps to get their numbers and divisions marked — only to cover them back up to avoid freezing!

I walked my bike down to the lake and looked down at the swim course. The wind was howling across the course, and there were whitecaps in the water where we were scheduled to be swimming in an hour! Here's a photo of the course:

If you look carefully, you can see the orange buoys we were supposed to swim around

As the morning progressed, the wind just got stronger, and after I laid out my gear in the transition area, I headed to the warm up tent. About 30 minutes before the race start, a guy popped into the tent and said "swim's cancelled." Most folks let out a sigh of relief. I went outside to see what the problem was and saw that the whitecaps and gotten even larger, and one of the course-marker buoys had blown at least 100 yards out of position. And the wind was only forecast to get stronger. Probably the right call!

Waiting for an open-water swim in a down jacket....

So now we would be running a duathlon - a 5k run, 27-mile ride, and another 5k run. I decided to wear my cycling shirt, arm-warmers, and bike gloves for the run. Then my first transition would be easy -- just throw on my helmet and bike shoes and go. But as I prepared to start the run, I noticed that I had forgotten the toe-covers on my bike shoes. Nothing I could do about that -- I guessed I'd just have cold feet during the ride. Next I tried to start my heart rate monitor -- no luck with that either. No problem, I could run and ride by feel.

I headed up to the start line, where the race had already begun. As they had planned to do with the swim, runners were being released gradually to minimize congestion in the transition area. I ended up lining up near the back. No worries, I thought, It'll be fun passing people on the run and ride.

Sure enough, as soon as I started I was passing people with regularity. The 5k course was a hilly out-and-back:

Holy mother of mountains!

The total elevation gain for the course was 213 feet. Compare that to the "hilly" Tightwad 5k course I ran in January -- 141 vertical feet. I did that race at an average 7:07 pace and was dying by the end. This time around, a similar pace felt comfortable. I guess the three months of training since then have paid off! I ended up measuring the course at 3.23 miles, with a 7:06 pace, officially a time of 22:53, feeling like I had plenty left for the ride. As I passed by the finish, Ryan, the official announcer (and a running buddy of mine), said he figured I'd passed over half the field during the run. I'm not sure about that but it definitely gave me a boost.

My transition went smoothly (1:25), and soon I was on the bike. My plan for the ride had been to pace myself using heart rate zones: Zone 4 for the climbs and Zone 3 for everything else. But that plan had to be tossed because I didn't have an HRM. My hope had been to go at least 20 mph on average, or 21 if I was really feeling good. But that plan hadn't accounted for the winds. By the time I was on the bike, the forecast proved to be quite accurate: 18-mph winds gusting to 30+. The one consolation was that the wind was mostly from the side. The course layout, a double loop, turned out to be very forgiving for this wind:

The wind was from the northwest, but the ride was mostly north/south, so for the most part it was just a crosswind. It was tending to a tailwind on the southbound part of the route, which was mostly uphill, and much of the dead-on headwinds we got on the northbound portion of the course were on downhill segments. As on the run, I passed lots of riders on the bike leg, and I'm pretty sure no one passed me, so I had a good ride. I also was experimenting with Tailwind for my nutrition on this tri. I've never carried anything but water to drink during a race but I've tried it at aid stations during ultras, and unlike Gatorade, it goes down quite well. My mixture had 3 scoops, or 300 calories' worth of nutrition, and I made sure to drink regularly. I'd almost finished it by the time I got to the aid station around Mile 15, so I decided to grab some water. I may have been going a bit too fast, because as I grabbed the water, it squirted out of the top like a geyser. Fortunately, I managed to hang on and dumped it into the bottle with the rest of my Tailwind.

There were a couple points on the back side where the wind really whipped across the course. I had to lean in and oversteer dramatically to counter the wind. I'm not sure if I would have been able to maintain control if I'd been using aero wheels! That said, many riders did finish the course using aero wheels, and one brave biker even had a disk on the rear wheel, so maybe I'm just being chicken. Either way, I don't think they would have given a huge advantage except for the few miles on the course when we really were riding straight into the wind.

In the end, I finished the ride, which I measured at 27.2 miles, at a 19.7-mph pace, officially 1:23:03. That was a little slower than my goal, but given the conditions, I'm pretty happy with the ride.

I didn't feel especially cold during the ride (and I LOVED the new arm-warmers), but as I rode into the finish I could tell that my feet were quite numb. I hopped off the bike and hobbled into the transition zone. I found I just couldn't get my legs to move as fast as I wanted. I sat down and took the time to double-knot my shoes and take one last swig of Tailwind from the extra bottle I had in the transition area. Then I climbed back on my feed and stumbled out for the run. My T2 time was 2:13, slower than ideal, but not terrible.

Starting out on the run, I really struggled to get my legs moving. I simply could not feel my feet, and while I trusted that they would do what I wanted them to do, my legs were cold enough that they were not responding like they normally do. Add to that the fact we were running up an 8 percent grade, and it felt like I was crawling up the hill. The guy ahead of me actually started walking less than 100 yards from the transition zone, so clearly I wasn't the only one struggling with this!

After the hill leveled off a bit, I did manage to gradually pick up the pace, but nothing like what I had done during the first run. I made it over the top of the hill and started heading back down, but still I struggled to make my legs move like I wanted them to. I still had no feeling in my feet! I've experienced numbness in my feet after a ride before, but never to this degree. It was very frustrating. Somehow I managed an 8:01 first mile.

For the next two miles, I gradually warmed up a bit, sliding off my arm warmers and breaking a sweat on my forehead. But the feeling never returned to my feet. I did gradually increase the pace, with a 7:37 Mile 2 and a 7:26 Mile 3, but I never hit the pace I had attained for the first run, and I felt like, if not for my cold muscles, I could have run faster. Overall my time for Run 2 was 24:38.

My total time for the duathlon was 2:13:56. This turned out to be fourth in my age group by less than two minutes. Argh! But it was my best age-group result in a triathlon to date, so I'll take it!

It was frigid in the finish area so I didn't hang around for long. I put sweats on over my race gear, put my down jacket back on, and packed everything up quickly to get back to the car. It was only then that I realized that I hadn't taken a post-race photo, so I snapped a quick shot in the car:

Still looking pretty cold!

So not the ideal setting for a duathlon (or triathlon), but I'm pretty happy with how I performed under the conditions. I'd like to try another one before my main race in June, and I'd also like to sign up for a nice, flat road 5k to see how I do in that. We'll see if I manage to do either of those things! Next up is a 10-mile trail race at Leatherwood. Details on yesterday's race are below:

Race Preview: The Belews Lake International Triathlon

My first triathlon of 2016 will be a "tune-up" with a total of 34.1 miles of swimming, biking, and running. In other words, it matches my longest triathlon. I consider it a tune up because I'm training to do a 70.3-mile half-Ironman in June.

The Belews Lake Tri is known for having cold weather, a hilly but fair ride, and a tough run. This year, the weather is currently forecast at 47 degrees for the start, with a chance of rain. The organizers are concerned enough about the cold that they added a duathlon option -- run 5k, bike 27 miles, run another 5k -- in lieu of the full triathlon.

But 47 degrees doesn't strike me as awful. I'll be in a wetsuit for the swim so that will be fine, and on the bike I've been riding in much colder temperatures this winter. Conditions should be nearly perfect for running. The only downside is that there does look to be some wind.

So what's my plan for the race?

On the swim, this distance shouldn't be a problem for me. My training swims have been close to 3000 yards, so 1500 meters should be a relatively easy effort. I've done two open-water swims in the past week, and with my wetsuit, I'm comfortable swimming faster than 2:00 per 100 yards, which is much faster than I swam at last year's International tri. I think a stretch goal might be to swim 1:45/100, which works out to a sub-29-minute swim leg. For a B goal, 2:00/100, or 33:00. Both of these would be considerably faster than last year's 37:21 swim.

For T1, this will be the first time I have to remove a wetsuit. I don't have a lot of practice doing this but I've gotten some tips from fellow triathletes, so in the best case I think I can do it in 30 seconds. I will have to put on a little extra gear as well -- arm warmers and gloves, and a shirt -- so I'd be happy with a T1 under 3:00. (Compare to 1:51 last year)

On the ride, I'm actually glad that it starts with a gradual uphill. This will give me a good chance to warm up. Hopefully I can keep the pace in the 19 mph range here.

The second 5 miles are all downhill, so hopefully I can really crank things up and be solidly in the mid-20s here. Then the next 10 miles are mostly uphill, so once again probably 18-19 mph there, and finally a final 10 miles with only one big climb that should be really fast. From what I've read, keeping your heart rate in Zone 4 is a good plan for this distance. That seems pretty high to me though -- even riding in Zone 3 for 30 minutes takes a lot out of me. I might fudge this a bit and look to ride in Zone 4 for the climbs, letting it slide back to Z3 for the descents. A Goal for the ride: 21 mph, about 1:17. B Goal is 20 mph, 1:21.

T2 should be more straightforward, so I'll look to be sub-2:00.

The run is a notoriously hilly double-out-and-back. Even though Stumpy Creek was supposed to be a hilly run, this one will be hillier, with three big climbs and several smaller ones. That said, I felt very strong on the 8-mile brick run I completed last weekend, so I think a pretty quick pace will be warranted. My plan is to try to hold back to around an 8:00 pace for the first (uphill) mile, then pick up the pace, ideally averaging 7:30 for the whole run. If I did that, my time would be 46:36. B goal is 8:00 miles, or 50:00. But if I'm feeling good I might push the pace even more...we'll just have to wait and see!

After a very high workload last week, I'm on a cutback week now, and I can really feel my muscles settling into place after aching all week. It's giving me confidence that I can have a strong race.

To sum up:

A Goals:
Swim: 1:45/100y, 29:00
T1: 3:00
Bike: 21mph, 1:17
T2: 2:00
Run: 7:30/mi, 46:36
Total: 2:38

B Goals:
Swim: 2:00/100y, 33:00
T1: 4:00
Bike: 20mph, 1:21
T2: 2:00
Run: 8:00/mi, 49:43
Total: 2:50

Race Recap: Tobacco Road Half Marathon

This winter and spring, my training is focused on the half-ironman I signed up for in June. But I also need to get my running back up to speed as I recover from my hamstring injury that happened in February of 2015. 13 months later, I'm finally showing some signs of a full recovery, but I still haven't gotten anywhere close to where I was before the injury.

Back then, running a 5K slower than 19 minutes was a really bad day. A decent half-marathon (had I run one) probably would have been around 1:30. Now I've had to adjust my goals. One reason I chose to run a half-ironman is that I knew I wouldn't be running very fast in the half. But I still figured something like a 1:38 might be possible—that's about a 7:30/mile pace. A 7:30 pace shouldn't tax my hamstrings, which tend to react most violently to speed workouts.

So for Tobacco Road my goal was to see what kind of a half I was capable of without swimming 1.2 miles and cycling 56 miles beforehand. Then the idea would be to improve my endurance over the next three months so that I could run that same pace as the final leg of a triathlon.

The plan was to run an easy first mile, then run at a 7:30 pace as long as I could hold on. Ideally I'd finish in 1:38 or 1:39. If I found the 7:30s too tough, then my B goal was to hang on for an overall average pace of 8:00 per mile, a 1:45 total time for the half.

I had signed up for Tobacco Road last year, where I was planning to pace my online friend Carrie Endara as she tried for a PR. But the injury in February cancelled that plan, so I had to wait until this year to finally meet Carrie in person. This year she'd be doing the full, so I wouldn't have a chance to run with her (and even if she was running the half, I'd have no shot at keeping up with her!), but I was excited to finally meet her! We had dinner (along with 8 of my DART buddies) the night before the race at a local Italian place and she was just as charming and excited about running as she has been for the several years I have known her online!

Then Chad, Chas, and I drove back to our hotel, where we obsessively organized our gear and slept restlessly before the race. We got up at 5:45 (after adjusting for Daylight Saving Time), and Chas snapped this photo of me in my running gear:

Ready as I'll ever be!

Carrie lives just a half mile from the start, so she invited me and my local running buddies to park at her place and walk together to the race. We all bantered about our goals and plans for the day. It was going to be warm and humid, so some of us (like Carrie) smartly adjusted our goals, while others (like me) foolishly decided to gut it out according to our original plans. Everyone checked their gear before realizing we had never taken a group photo. Hence there is no group photo of everyone before the race. Oh well. It was time to line up for the porta-potties, so I headed over and began my wait.

I managed to find the slowest line, but was able to do my business with about 15 minutes to spare, just in time to eat a GU and head to the starting area. There I found Chad, lined up about even with the 4:15 marathon pace group. I felt like I should be farther forward, but there were crowds ahead of us, and I had wanted to take it easy for the first mile, so I stayed there.

The race started right on time, and we walked slowly towards the line. We finally started running as we crossed, about 1:30 after the gun sounded. The pace felt slow, so I dodged my way forward. I was wasting energy, but I didn't want to run too slow, and I knew we'd be on a greenway after 2.5 miles, and it would be even tougher to pass folks.

I completed the first (uphill) mile in 8:06, so not too fast, although with all the dodging back and forth, my effort was probably too hard for what was supposed to be a warm-up. Mile 2 opened up and I was able to ease into race pace, running a 7:34. A half mile later the half marathon split from the marathon and entered the packed gravel greenway we'd be running on for the next 8 miles. My running buddy Megan was there cheering and taking photos of all the DARTers (not coincidentally, her husband Derek was among them, trying to BQ). I raised my arms and shouted to her, but she told me later that the photo didn't come out. This lack of decent photography would become a theme for the day...

The next few miles felt fairly comfortable, 7:36, 7:28, 7:40, and I settled in behind a couple guys who seemed quite chatty for running a race. Perhaps not surprisingly, after Mile 5 one of the guys told his buddy he needed to walk, and I never saw them again. Not long after that I saw the race leader heading back the other way, looking very strong. He'd go on to win in 1:09:23. Smoking!

Mile 6 was uphill and I slowed to a 7:57. That's okay, I figured, I'd get that as a downhill soon enough. Along here I saw Chas headed home and went for the high-five. We almost missed, but it doesn't count as a whiff if you contact a couple fingers, right? Rather than a high-five it was more like a mid-two. Chas would go on to PR in the race with a blazing 1:25:50. Awesome in these conditions!

Now the volume of runners headed the other way increased and it was tough to spot friends. I missed Allison headed toward a very solid 1:43. After the turnaround I missed Allyson, Pamela, Jack, and may have just seen Barrie out of the corner of my eye.

Now the heat of the day was starting to get to me. It seemed that at every water stop, the cup I grabbed had only an inch or so of water, so I tried to grab as many as I could. Usually I got two, but once I think I managed three. I didn't want to seem like a hog, but it was hot! I'd drink the first cup, take a sip out of the second, then dump the rest over my head. Despite my efforts, my pace slowed. Miles 6-8 were 7:57, 7:59, 7:57.

Then we hit the long gradual uphill I'd been warned about. I knew it was somewhere between Mile 8 and 10 but I kicked myself for not memorizing the exact location of the hill's start and finish (for future reference it starts at 8.2 and continues all the way to Mile 10. Even then, although it levels off somewhat, you don't get a real downhill until 11.8). Over that 1.8 miles you gain just over 100 feet, so it's not steep at all, but there is absolutely no relief. My pace slowed to 8:14 in Mile 9, and 8:27 in Mile 10. Somewhere along here the 1:45 pace team passed me and I wondered if I'd have to kiss my "B" goal of finishing in 1:45 goodbye. But then I remembered that I had started a ways back from the pace team, so I might still have a shot at 1:45! I decided to let myself walk through the aid station at Mile 10, then push hard to the finish.

I was ready for the downhill finish to start when I hit the pavement at Mile 10.6, but alas, the road was still pretty much flat. I did my best to pick up the pace but ended up with an 8:46 for the mile. In Miles 12 and 13, when there finally was some downhill, I was just cooked, and could never go faster than an 8:00 pace. I didn't even manage to speed up for the final sprint to the finish. My finishing splits were 8:07, 8:13, and 8:19 for the final 0.1 miles.

Tough race! My overall time was 1:45:19, an 8:01 per mile average. I'm going to give myself a little slack for the warm conditions and call it "B-goal achieved."

I headed up to the cool-down area and scarfed down two pieces of pizza. Then I met up with Chas, who was very psyched about his PR, and we changed and walked to the finish line to watch the marathon finish. It proved to be an even tougher day for most of the marathoners as the heat got to them. Carrie was the one exception: She finished in 3:11 to capture 5th overall female and first in age group. Here she is running strong to the finish:

Solid!

Then after watching most of my friends finish disappointed, we headed up to the beer tent to drown our sorrows. A small group of us realized that we had never taken a group photo, so the few of us that remained finally managed to get a photo:

Happy Chas, sad Derek, laid-back Chad, okay Dave, and resigned Matt

Chas, Chad and I had a fun lunch with an ecstatic Carrie and three of her cheerful kids before steeling ourselves for the 2.5-hour-drive home. It was only on the ride home that I realized I'd never gotten a photo of my first in-person meeting with Carrie, who's been my online buddy for years. We're going to try to rectify that next week, when we're hoping to get together for a recovery run when she's visiting my part of the state.

Details of yesterday's race are below.

Training and sickness

I have been building up base mileage for the past two months getting ready to start seriously training for my first half-ironman. In two and a half weeks, I'll be running my first tune-up race, the Tobacco Road Half Marathon. Since it is just a tune-up, I am not changing my workout plan much to accommodate it. Still, I need to have some sense of what pace I'm capable of, so this week and next week I have planned a couple of workouts that should help me assess my fitness: Today, I have 6 * 800 on the schedule, and next Tuesday I've got a 4-mile tempo run.

The only problem is, I'm sick with a cold. I did run yesterday, but I came home with my nose running like a faucet. I got worse all day yesterday, and slept fitfully. I pulled the plug on today's workout before I went to bed. I'm starting to feel better now and will probably be in good enough shape for an easy run tomorrow, but not the 2500-meter swim I had planned. This was supposed to be a pickup week after I cut back last week, but that plan is shot to hell.

So what to do about the workouts? I had planned a double on Thursday, with a morning easy run and an evening trail run followed by beer with the running club, one of my favorite events of the week. I think now I will try to slot in that 6 * 800 in the morning and suck it up and miss the beer run that night. Argh. Then I'll do my swim on Friday before resuming something more like my normal schedule on Saturday. I won't get near the amount of mileage I had planned for the week, but hopefully I'll emerge healthy and ready for the following week.

Oh, and did I mention that I'm signed up for a half-ironman in June? It will be my first, the Eagleman 70.3 in Cambridge, Maryland. Somehow I became obsessed with the idea of completing one while I was in India, and then somehow I signed up for one... and then I signed up for another one, the Augusta 70.3 in September. I figure after these two events I will be ready to go all-in on triathlons or give them up completely. Either way, it should be an interesting ride!

First, though, I just need to get over this cold....

Race Recap: Bengaluru Marathon

At 9 pm in my hotel room last night it hit me: I would be running a marathon in the morning, and I'd need a fair bit of water for pre-race hydration.

In India, you can't drink the tapwater. The hotel had provided a small bottle of water for the room, but that was it. I wanted at least a couple liters! So I had to get off of my comfy bed and trudge outside the hotel to find a vendor willing to sell me a large bottle of water. 10 minutes later, that problem was solved, but it's the sort of problem I've never faced before a race. If you need water, you just get it out of the tap.

It was one of many details that make running a marathon in India a somewhat-different experience from the US. Even negotiating my way to the marathon expo to pick up my race bib and shirt was an adventure. I had to find an auto-rickshaw driver who just wanted to get his cab fare (most drivers seem to want to give you a "free" ride to their favorite shopping places instead of the place you actually need to go). Then I had to explain where he was going. He had never heard of the Koramangala Indoor stadium, where the expo was located. I found it on Google Maps, but he didn't want to look at the map; he needed a nearby landmark. Fortunately he knew the Koramangala Police Station (I didn't ask why), so we were off. The expo itself was smallish, but familiar to a runner -- you have to go all the way to the back past the booths in order to get your race packet. I didn't see any booths selling anything I needed, so I just took a quick selfie and went back out to find the same auto-rickshaw driver, who again needed me to explain how to get to my hotel (he had picked me up at a Starbucks a mile or so away).

Ready to go!

Finding a carb-laden dinner that wasn't likely to lead to an upset stomach was also a challenge. Fortunately the regional specialty, biryani, is relatively mild and full of rice (though I couldn't resist ordering some tandoori shrimp as well).

Yum!

The stadium where the race started was right across the street from my hotel, so I walked over to check out the start / finish line.

Pretty cool!

The large stadium is used primarily for soccer and track meets

Here's how close I was to the stadium: I could literally see it from my (dirty) hotel room window:

The room was clean on the inside, honest!

After I got my water, all that was left was to channel-surf for a few minutes to watch some Bollywood-style music videos, and then try and get a little sleep. The race started at the unbelievably early hour of 4:40 a.m. (I think this was mainly an accommodation for traffic), so I set my alarm as early as I could fathom: 3:30.

Naturally I awoke at 3:20. After a quick shower, I changed into my running gear and headed over to the stadium. It was a pleasant 68-degree morning, very comfortable for strolling around, but about 20 to 30 degrees warmer than what I'd prefer for a marathon. However, I'd been training in warmer temperatures for the past 6 weeks so I felt like I should be able to do okay in these temps.

About 10 minutes before the start, we all lined up. There looked to be about 1,500 runners (the much-larger half marathon, thankfully, didn't start for another hour). Soon we were running in the darkness through what looked to be a very nice park. The course was basically an out-and-back, so I took note of the tree cover, which would provide welcome shade during the return trip.

My plan was to run around a 5:40/k pace (9:09/mile) for the first half, which had more downhill than uphill, and then see if I could hang on to the same pace for the return trip and finish under 4 hours. If I wasn't feeling it, I could slow to a 6:00 pace and still finish at around 4:07.

There was a 4-hour pace group, and they seemed to have a similar strategy, going out a little fast (probably more like 5:30/k) to bank some time for the uphill-heavy return. The 5:40-ish pace seemed comfortable, and I even let it drift to around 5:30 on downhill sections. I took care to get plenty of water at aid stations, which were liberally placed every 1-2k on the course. I also dumped some water over my head to cool off. Even though I didn't feel particularly hot, it was always a welcome sensation!

I was keeping the 4:00 pace group in sight, which was nice, except they tended to mob the aid stations so it was sometimes difficult for me to get a cup of water. Even with these delays my pace remained around 5:30-5:40 all the way through 20k (21k is halfway). At some point I saw the leaders headed back on the return of the out-and-back. Even in India it looked like one of the runners was an East African, but the others were all Indian.

I had been concerned about traffic during the race since I'd heard that last year's race was overrun with traffic, but this year the police and volunteers were doing a pretty good job keeping cars off the race route. Typically we had half of a divided four-lane road to ourselves. However, as I approached the turnaround at 22k (it's not a perfect out-and-back), some drivers started becoming a bit more aggressive and impinged on the course. That, plus an uphill approach to the turnaround were slowing me down. I had noted that I passed the 21k marker at around 1:58:00, which meant I had an extra four minutes on the return trip. A quick calculation suggested that if I could keep my pace under 5:50 I should be able to sneak in under four hours.

But right about the point I turned around, now headed downhill, suddenly everything seemed much more difficult. Within a couple kilometers I was starting to think about 6:30 splits instead of 5:50 splits. By 28k, with 14k to go, 7:00 splits were becoming difficult. By 30k my splits were closer to 7:30.

I managed to hang on to that pace until I hit the hill I was dreading -- a long, steady climb from roughly the 33k mark to the 35k mark. My GPS records this as only a 30-foot hill, but it definitely felt much worse. It was also exposed in the sunlight. I took my first extended walk-break, and paid the price. My splits for kilometer 33 and 34 were 11:07 and 9:11. Yikes!

When I reached the top I was able to pick up the pace, barely, even hitting another 7:30 for kilometer 37. Now there was quite a bit of traffic impinging on the road and we were relegated to either running in the dusty shoulder or a rough "sidewalk". I chose the shoulder. I kept it up for a while but took another extended walk break with 5k to go. We were now in the shady park, so I felt relatively cool, I just couldn't convince my body to move any faster. I passed Ram, one of my friends from the Chennai runners, who was run-walking the half-marathon, and he cheered me up briefly. But with about 4.5k to go I was still walking. A Western runner passed me (I think he was just going for a run, not racing) and said "c'mon, it's just 4k to go...really?" It was 4.5k, but of course he was right. I did manage to start moving a bit faster, but not fast enough to stave off the 4:30 pace team.

Finally with just over 1k to go the 4:45 pacer ran by, solo. I asked if he was still on pace and he said he might be a minute slow. I decided to try to keep up. It was definitely tough, but it was doable. I think he even picked up the pace, but I stayed with him. There were signs for 500 meters left, 300, 200...and then we were running into the stadium. The pacer backed off to let me have my moment on the finish line, but I said I wanted to run across with him, so he grabbed my hand and we crossed together. My Garmin recorded the time as 4:43:47. It wasn't sub-4 or even sub-4:30, but it felt great to be done.

At the finish line I met up with Ajit, my contact for the Hyderabad Runners, who had completed the half-marathon and looked much better than I'm sure I did. I gulped down as much water as I could, got my medal, and then watched the finish-area festivities. There was some great funky Indian pop music playing, and lots of runners were up by the stage dancing their hearts out. I could barely move my legs, so unfortunately there was no chance of my joining them. It was also now 10 am and the sun was blazing down on my bare shoulders. I decided to head back to the hotel. I shuffled my way there, showered, and then thought about my post-race meal.

Normally after a big race I eat the biggest hamburger I can find. In India, that's not really an option given that the vast majority of people believe cows are sacred. I decided that I could substitute some good old-fashioned American fried chicken -- at KFC. Unlike in America, to get there I had to haggle with a rickshaw driver over price and convince him I really was in no condition to go shopping, but the chicken at KFC was just as I remembered it. Then I went to Starbucks and had a huge iced-coffee and a slab of cherry chocolate cake. Almost like home!

Unfortunately given my distress during and after the race, I don't have any photos to share of the actual event. But if you're interested, you can check out the details of my race below.

Starting to think about race day

The Bengaluru Marathon is now just five days away. I've been in India for nearly seven weeks and training has gone okay, so I should be ready to race.

That said, I'm still recovering from injury. I've never gone into a marathon with my fitness level so low, so setting goals for myself has been difficult. I've always felt that even when running a marathon "for fun," I should be able to complete a road marathon in under four hours, but as I think about this event, I'm not quite sure that is a reasonable goal.

A 4-hour marathon requires a 9:09 pace per mile, or 5:40 per kilometer. Most of my training runs -- even the short ones -- have been slower than that. In principle, there's nothing wrong with taking your training runs slowly. Often runners say they have difficulty keeping their pace slow enough compared to what their training plan proscribes. In my case, it's been so hot and humid that I've had little trouble keeping my runs slow. My difficulty has been in getting enough mileage. Since I'm recovering from injury, I don't want to push the mileage too far, but I still want to be prepared for the race.

When I'm healthy I like to peak at 70 miles per week during marathon training. I haven't gotten anywhere close to that training for Bengaluru. The past 6 weeks have looked like this: 43 miles, 40, 31, 40, 36, and 29 (the last two weeks are taper weeks). Again, plenty of people run marathons on mileage like that, but I'm not sure how many of them are breaking 4 hours.

Where I've been lacking is speed work (I've done practically none for fear of injury) and long runs (my longest is 28k [17.5 miles]; I would have preferred to run a couple 32k [20-mile] runs). How will I perform in the final, uncharted 14k of this race? I don't know.

The final variable is temperature. It should be considerably cooler in Bangalore than it has been during many of my training runs. Here's the current forecast for race morning:

Race starts at 5:30 a.m. and ideally I'd finish by 9:30

Even by the end of the race, it should be cooler than nearly all of my runs here, but it's still considerably warmer than what I'd like to see--my ideal running temperature is around 40 degrees! I know the weather will be slowing me by the end of the race. The question is, should I try to bank a little time at the start when temperatures will be cooler? Another argument in favor of a faster start is the elevation profile:

Elevation is in meters!

It's not a super hilly race but there is definitely some climbing, and most of that climbing happens towards the end of the race.

My solid "B" goal for the race is to run 6:00 per kilometer, about 9:40 per mile. This would have me finishing in 4:13. To hit my "A" goal of sub-4-hours, I need to run 5:40/k or 9:09/mile. I think a reasonable approach to that goal is to shoot for sub-5:40 pace on the downhills at the start, running closer to a 6:00 for the uphills. Then if I'm feeling good after the turnaround 22k in (13.7 miles), I can try to stay below 5:40 even on the climbs. If I can push through the big climb around 33k at that pace, then I will have a shot at sub-4; if not, hopefully I can at least hang on for 4:13.

I read an interesting article yesterday about running in the heat. The take-home message is that runners perform better in the heat if they pre-cool. In 65-degree temps this probably just means not bundling up before the start, bringing some cold water to consume at the start, and also probably taking every opportunity to dump cold water over my head during the race, even before I feel hot.

The article also offers some advice for heavy sweaters like me, and offers a strategy for hyper-hydration before a race. Since I haven't had time to test this out, I'm not going to try this during the race, but it's an interesting strategy that I may try some time in the future.

During today's run it was relatively cool (around 70 degrees) and I was feeling good, so I allowed myself a few kilometers at sub-5:00 pace (it ended up around 7:50/mile). It felt fairly solid; my hamstrings seemed none the worse for the wear, so I think I should be okay running anything up to about a 5:00 pace during the race on downhills. Anything faster than that would probably stress my legs too much, but even a 5:00 pace will allow me to bank some time.

When I was initially thinking about running a race in India, I was concerned about the quality of water provided to the runners, but since I've gotten here I've been fine drinking water provided by restaurants, etc. Everyone knows that you can't drink tap water, so what's provided at the race should be fine. Therefore I'm not going to use the hydration pack I brought for the race; I'll use the regular aid stations like everyone else. That should save me some weight and allow me to go a little faster.

Wish me luck!

Running long and hot in Chennai

It's 4:20 a.m. on Sunday morning.

I'm standing in the darkness on the side of the Grand Southern Trunk Road in Chromepet, south of Chennai, India.

Despite the early hour, there's quite a lot of activity. I've been told to meet here with the Chromepet chapter of the Chennai Running Club for our Sunday long run. Some men have set up an improvised water distribution depot next to the road. The road itself is also quite busy for this time of day, with fully loaded buses, trucks, scooters, and cars whizzing by with dramatic regularity.

Not a great place for a run...

But there are no runners here. There aren't a lot of places to run in Chennai; most of the roads are simply too busy to run on, even early in the morning, so the running club arranges meetups throughout the city, and runners then carpool to the start of their run. My meetup isn't till 4:45, and I've run with the Chromepet guys before, so I'm not especially worried. But last time, they picked me up at Madras Christian College, where I'm staying. This time, the college is out of the way compared to where the run starts, so I had to get myself to the meetup.

This involved setting an alarm for 3:55 a.m., walking the half-mile from the guest house to the college gate, waking up the guard so he could open the gate, then getting opinions from three different auto-rickshaw drivers about how to get to the location I specified. They were quite baffled as to why someone would want a ride to Ambika Wood Industries (the location of our meetup) at 4:10 a.m. During the drive, the driver kept asking if he was going the right way, despite the fact that I had already told him it was right on the main road. Finally he would go no further, saying we were at the edge of Chromepet. I could see from the map on my phone that the location was close, so I paid him and walked the rest of the way there. Ambika Wood Industries is indeed closed at this hour.

At 4:30 I text Ramachandran to make sure I'm at the right spot. He replies right away saying I am and he'll be there in 10 minutes. At 4:55 I text again to see if he's still on the way. He say's yes, sorry, he'll be there in 5 minutes. Finally at 5 a.m. the runners show up and we head south towards the Officers' Training Academy where we'll be running. Immediately, amazingly to me, we run into a traffic jam:

Yep, this is 5:07 on a Sunday morning.

Finally, we arrive. The place where we're running turns out to be more than just an academy, it's a military complex with a naval air station, a coast guard air station, and also a shrine to St. Thomas (who, legend has it, was martyred at this spot). We will be running on the access roads connecting all these places. Even at 5:20, in the darkness, I can see that lots of people have figured out this is a good place to exercise. There are walkers, runners, and a few cyclists, though there are only about 4k worth of runnable roads that aren't behind security checkpoints. We'll be doing a double-out-and-back to make a 6k loop. My plan is to run 32k, or 20 miles, my one 20-miler of this marathon training cycle (my marathon, Bangalore, is just 3 weeks away).

Ramachandran (who goes by "Ram") had told me that several runners would be doing 28k, so I figured I'd have company for most of my run. As it turned out, they had changed this plan, doing their 32k run last week and taking it easy this week because they are running a half-marathon two weeks out(!) from the Bangalore Marathon.

Two runners accompany me for the first loop, sprinting to the top of the hill where St. Thomas is buried. I plug along at a more methodical pace of 6:30/k, about 10:30 per mile, which seems reasonable in the 81-degree, 100% humidity morning. Another group of runners is doing repeats on the hill, and there also seems to be a school track team or club working out here.

After lap 1, 6k in, I feel like this might be doable. I'm wearing a hydration pack and taking frequent sips, and I have a plan to eat a gel every 7k. There is a security station at the end of the first out-and-back, 2k into the loop, and the guards stand and salute as I pass.

The route is flat except for the one big hill where the St. Thomas Shrine sits. I take a blurry selfie on the flat part:

So far, so good!

Up to now I've been keeping quite close to my planned 6:30 pace, but I can feel the day start to warm up as the sun rises in the eastern sky. Still, I maintain my 6:30 pace, even up the 140-foot climb of St. Thomas Mount.

Back at the cars, it looks like some of the other runners are already wrapping things up, and I still have 20k to go. I turn and head out for another loop. I figure out that I'll need to do a total of 5 loops plus an additional 2k to get to 32. I'm starting to recognize familiar faces among the walkers, runners, and cyclists on my route. I wave at the saluting guards again. Climbing the hill again, I find myself unable to maintain that 6:30 pace. I slow to 6:58, then 7:05. At the bottom of the hill, I pick it up a bit, but only to 6:45. This is going to be a long day.

18k done, back at the cars, I begin to wonder whether I can do this. The other runners all seem to be done, and it seems unfair to ask them to wait for me. I head out for another loop, with a new goal of just keeping the pace faster than 7:00 per mile. This works until I get to the hill. I tell myself I can walk when I get to the steep part at the top.

Finally I make it back to the cars: 24k done, 8k to go. I'm out of water in my hydration pack, but I have a couple water bottles in my bag, so I refill. I tell Ram that maybe they should just leave without me -- everyone is definitely finished. He tells me they will stay close by and can pick me up when I finish.

The heat is now stifling. Though there are some places with shade, a lot of the route is exposed. I decide I'm definitely not running up the hill again; I can just complete a shorter loop and tack on a little extra at the end.

By the time I reach the security guards 2k into the loop, I decide that I've had enough. I will just head back to the starting area, 28k complete, and call it a day. I've been run-walking for the past few kilometers anyways, and it's not clear I'm really getting any benefit from the workout. My times for the last 4k: 7:52, 7:16, 8:47, 7:45. Average pace for the whole run: 6:51/k, or 11:08 per mile. Here I am at the end of the run, totally spent:

That was hard!

On the drive home, the runners tell me that typically when they train in Chennai and race in cooler climates, their times improve by 20-30 minutes. I hope so! Bangalore is usually 10-15 degrees cooler than Chennai and much less humid, so if I want to be out there less than 5 hours or so, I'll need to go considerably faster than I did today. My goal is to run the race at a 6:00/k pace, which would have me finishing in 4:13. Given my recent struggles with injury and my general pattern of not running well in the heat, I'll take it!

Details of today's run are below: