Vancouver Sun Run and Victoria Times Colonist - Race Reports

I even have geeky graphs and analysis in this post, ala Science of Sport

Vancouver Sun Run and Victoria Times Colonist

It is the peak of the spring running season in British Columbia at the moment and the last two weeks have heralded two of the major 10km races on the Calendar. Both these races are sponsored and promoted by the local newspapers and hence get a large turnout.

Vancouver Sun Run

First was Vancouver’s Sun Run which tours the edge of Stanley Park, English Bay and Vancouver with 50,000 other runners and walkers. This course taunts a conservative pacing effort and negative splits with a downhill first km and two bridge crossings in the second half of the race.

After what I felt was a restrained first mile I looked at my watch and was at 5:07 mile pace, a lot faster than my plan of 5:25. The race then cuts along the bay and groups tend to form, unfortunately I couldn’t really find a defined pack and didn’t risk expending the energy to bridge to the large pack about 100m ahead.

After the halfway point I was a 17:20 and looking to accelerate off the top of the Burrard Street bridge. However in the second 5km I ended up focussing on trying to maintain a pace in the headwind that sprung up and maintain position. With no pack to speak of and still carrying the remnants of a cold this section was a bit of a slog, ended up going with a runner who was accelerating through and managed to pick up a couple positions in the last km over the Cambie street bridge.

End result 35:21 finishing 93rd overall. Not as fast as I would have liked by ran pretty strong and just lacked the speed that I was hoping for.

Victoria Times Colonist

After recovering pretty quickly from Sun Run and having a good hit out at the Forerunners clinic midweek decided to do the” Newspaper double” and head over to Vancouver Island for the Times Colonist 10k a week later. With my season of triathlon racing approaching soon I decided to train through this one and still get my miles in on the bike in the couple days before.

Having ridden to Victoria from the ferry the night before and having done my normal Friday Night and Saturday Rides I came to the start line reasonably fresh considering I had clocked 200km on the bike in the previous 36 hours.

The main goal for this race was to start conservative and pace it well. So crossing the 1km mark in Beacon Hill Park right on 3:30 meant my goal was achieved! Only problem was had 9km of a race left and about 12000 behind me so still had to work . After maintaining my pace for the next couple km’s I settled into to a small group and looked to go with any small breaks. Doing this allowed me to gain a couple places coming into the 5km mark which I passed at 17:32.

The next couple of km’s weren’t great and lost a bit of ground on my pace and couldn’t hold the group I had caught at 5km. managed to hold the gap at around 15 seconds and worked to maintain this as we left the coast and the view of the Olympia mountains and headed up the hill and into downtown Victoria. With about 1km to go it was attack or be attacked and finished of with a 3:21 km grabbing about 3 places in the 400m for a final time of 35:46 and 48^th Overall.

Week in review

In the space of 7 days had two good but not great races and definitely improved my pacing strategy over the week. To only run Times Colonist 26 seconds slower with no taper compared to the Sun Run was a good sign for the triathlon season to come. Having come off a cold and a March injury was happy to be running well even though did not PR in any of the races

Have been training and running in my Newton Trainers and Racer’s for the last 6 months now and my feet feel a lot less beat up than they did previously allowing me to focus on achieving the targets of my specific training sessions.

Next on the agenda is a couple months of training focussing on hitting training goals each week with a few “no taper” races thrown in to the mix before focusing on one of the Half Ironman Triathlon races on my schedule and the Scotiabank Half marathon.

2009 Thus Far

Date	Race	Time	Overall Place	Division	Division Place
Jan 11th	Pioneer 8km	27:52 (PR)	34/630	M25-29	10/28
Jan 25th	Chilly Chase 10km	34:51 (PR)	3/169	M20-29	3/9
Feb 1st	Icebreaker 8km	27:13 (PR)	13/215	M25-29	4/16
Feb 8th	San Diegeto Half Marathon	1:19:32 (PR)	16/1302	M25-29	3/85
Mar 8th	Harry’s Spring Run-Off 8km	28:11	21/973	M25-29	7/74
Mar 28th	Dave Reed Spring Classic 5km	17:10 (PR)	12/226	M20-34	9/43
Apr 19th	Vancouver Sun Run 10km	35:21	93/42450	M25-29	28/2606
Apr 26th	Times Colonist 10km	35:46	48/9932	M25-29	12/463

Upcoming Schedule

Date	Race
May 10th	Bare Bones Duathlon (Tentative)
May 24th	Shawnigan Lake Half iron Triathlon
June 7th	Persona Oliver Half Iron Triathlon
June 12th	North Shore Credit Union Longest Day 5km (Tentative)
June 14th	Edge to Edge Marathon Relay (Tentative)
June 21st	Victoria Half Iron or Sprint Triathlon (Tentative)
June 28th	Scotiabank Half Marathon
July 1st	Canada Day Open Water Swim (4km)
July 12th	Vancouver Half Iron Triathlon
Aug 30th	Ironman Canada Triathlon

Ninja Training 101

Welcome to the world of ninja Training summarized in a blog post.

What is Ninja Training?

Ninja Training has two definitions;

A. Dressing up totally in black without lights and climbing and descending cypress totally by feel. (IPod with Rally like directions around i.e; Medium Left.). This is not recommended however I am positive I know a couple people who train like this

B. Ninja Training is abandoning the coordination involved in organizing rides with people, planning routes, meeting at designated times and having structure in training. Ideally some night riding is also involved

This weekend could be looked at as my first ninja session of 2009. After work on Friday gunned it home and hopped on the road bike for 1:50 with the daylight remaining and did a 60km ride out to Iona and back via UBC both ways.

Saturday morning decided to show to the club ride and headed out on the Tri bike with Jared, did a couple loops of Iona, headed out richmond for a bit of a sojourn through Steveston then back through UBC with a couple of hard efforts. With ride back and from st georges was most probaly around 95km. Ride route is here, may have missed a couple parts

After a quick lunch and trip to Speed theory for some bike stuff drove to the ferry. After ferry and buffet dinner had 40km ride on road bike into Victoria. Ferry was alte so this involved some ninja riding.

Stayed at Dave and Rhea's 1km from the start of Times Colonist. Went and grabbed package in the am and after warmup and the like the last few minutes ticked down quickly as always. Pain clock then started and we were running. Race report will follow but had a good race, poor section between 5km and 8km but managed to hold position relative to others from 3km on and ran down 3 people in the last km and had a strong finish.

After post race chill headed out on the bike with a quick stop in a fort street cycles. Got advice on differnt routes back to the ferry to avoid quadra and ended up going on the galloping goose trail. My turn off for interurban came quick and although I had my lite back pack with my Newtons and running clothes decided to head out on the trial for a bit. ran out of pavement at km 10 but kept on riding the road bike on the gravel path (a couple interresting short climbs trying to get traction and ended up riding till km 45. Knowing I had the ferry journey back, hit the road a t this point and after a lunch of salami and a mars bar headed back along sooke road before another 10km or so on the trail and then up the coast to the ferry. In the end 5 hour 20 minutes on the bike at a good recovery hr (legs were shot from the 10km) and about 130km of riding (can't gmap full trail).

Ride map is here Definetely not high intensity riding but with about 45km on gravel was definetely a cool ride at a relative low intensity. Hitting hills on west saanich at the end made for a good workout.

Ninja weekend summary;

Avoided all "organisation" in workouts - Partial check, did race and show up to a club ride. Clkub ride did end up being a choose your own adventure.
A lot of solo riding - check
no real plan - check
Night riding - check
Off road riding - check
Absolutely shattered - check
Exotic Locations - Do Sooke, saanich, steveston & victoria count?
No one really knowing exactly were you are- check

In 48 hours
- 325km of riding (200 miles)
- 10km running race (time 35:46 - 48th overall)
- 2 Bc ferries buffets