DC Rock'N'Roll Nutrition calculator

Now that I've convinced myself that my legs are not going to fall off before mile 20 of the marathon, my next concerns concerned how I was going to replenish calories from on-course nutrition and how many calories I should carry with me.

I've worked with a nutritionist and thankfully haven't experienced any sensitivity to what kind of food I shove in my mouth during exercise, but to have a good rest-of-marathon day, I'd like to aim for 60 grams of carbs per hour after the first hour. That was a little tricky to put into a chart, so I made one that assums a constant rate of carbs per hour, and if I can finish around -240 calories, that will meet my goal

I plan to start with 20 oz of liquid and 3 Gu's in my fuel belt, which gives me 460 calories. I expect to have one Gu before I start, since it will have been longer since breakfast than it usually is when I'm just doing a training run. By refilling my bottle with 1 cup of Gatorade at each opportunity and adding 2 more Gu's on the course, I should be totally good for my calorie goals.

Try out the plot yourself, and see what works for you! 


I do love making nice spreadsheets, and imagine a version that lets you see what would happen if they run out of gu before you get to the second stop, or where you could choose to take 2 cups of Gatorade at each opportunity, but time is finite, so there probably won't be a version 2 of this thing.

Red Nose Run #1 2015

Jen posted a race report for the Red Nose Run last weekend, since it is a competition of sorts. Thanks for the good idea Jen :)

I had my peak weekend for the DC Rock'N'Roll Marathon last weekend, and had 20 miles to run. Thankfully Team Z makes the big runs a special event, complete with a contest, so there's some excitement added to the dread. For the Red Nose Run event, you predict how long it will take you to run your distance, and then go running without a watch, or in my data-seeky case, without a watch displaying pace or time.

I set up Garmin to show me only heart rate, which helps me not go out to hard, and told the timer that I'd be doing 20 miles in 3:30. That was a stupid math error. I'd calculated the time I wanted the day before:
11 min/mile * 20 miles = 220 minutes = 3:40
but then forgot and just pulled a number out of space.
I actually wanted to run around a 10:30 pace, which would have been a 3:30 finish, but I knew I'd be refilling bottles after each loop and wanted to have that time as a buffer. Oh well.

The route was hilly, and looked like an elephant, and was strangely confusing. Like, I ran the same loop 4 times and still needed the cue sheet for the 4th loop.

Also, by the fourth loop, there was noteworthy snow buildup, which doesn't help much when it comes to pacing.

I finished in an overall time of 3:40:49 -- too bad I gave the wrong estimate, which is an amazing pace for such a hilly route, with stops to refuel and with such snow.

The hills had a couple of unexpected side effects:

1. They gave me confidence for my marathon pace goals. If I can run that quickly with hills, then I should be able to run just a little faster without so many hills
2. They helped me practice engaging my glutes, so I don't have a terribly sore hip like I did after the 16 and 18 miler. This is awesome because it makes it more likely that the hip pain is a technique issue and less likely that it's an "-itis" of some kind.

Great day, and I am so ready for taper!

Snowy run commute

I've lived here for a number of years, but driving in snow is not something I'm eager to get the hang of. So last night, when I realized I had plenty of workout gear at work and in my car, I chose to leave my car in the work garage and get home by other means. At first, I was going to ride the bus, but then decided it was too cold to wait and started running with a side goal to beat the bus

The bus didn't catch me until I was carefully walking over the bridge, about 20 minutes in, so that's pretty close.

A good run overall, with only one "boom" coming downhill close to home.

Way better than 20-40' on the treadmill, for sure!

Broken 1650's and swim test sets

I love, love, love data, and love my Garmin 910 that helps me gather swimming data, but unfortunately, it's hard to remember/dig up/decode results of some past swim sets, even with all that data.

In the last few weeks at swimming we've done three different test sets
1. 1650 for time, straight
2. Broken 1650 with structured rest, subtract 2:30 to find swimming time
3. 16 x 100 on an interval with a 50 sprint at the end.

Sharing a lane is lovely because of all the drafting, but it can also be tough to get a "good" test in. For instance in the first test, I was with some people who were too much faster than I am, so I was lapped enough to only get 1500 done before it was time to move on to the next part of the workout. It was a good 1500, but it's certainly a caveat-ed result.

The second test was awesome, and if my results are slower than some other time I've done it, it's just because I swam slower.

Today was the third of the tests and it was awesome. I was drafting, but strong, and hit the 1:50 intervals, which I've never done before (that I can remember)
Anyways, so at the risk of being even more of a "training log", I'd like to archive some results so I can come back to them more easily.

Date	Test	Result	Pace	Notes
1/27/15	1	24:30	1:47/100m, 1:38/100y	1500 yds
2/3/15	2	29:28	1:47/100m, 1:38/100y	Time after subtracting, 25m pool
2/12/15	3	1:50 interval		Made all send-offs, 1-10 sec rest, 25m pool

First Marathon - prep and plans

I'm a little less than 6 weeks from running my first marathon and the training has gone really well.

I finished the triathlon season with a great race at Waterman's in October last year, running a half marathon PR over the course of the day, and then hit a bit of a lull with running.

The marathon build started pretty soon after that, and the running was going well, but I wasn't seeing the dramatic drops in pace that I did last year -- which makes sense, since last year, I was losing 1-2 pounds a week (on purpose) over the winter and my muscles were super pumped to make my much lighter self essentially fly.

I was feeling sort of bleh about my paces and goals, until I looked back over a few months and realized that while the drops weren't dramatic, they are still happening. I've had a great new running buddy who has kept me accountable and joined me for 8-10 miles of most of my long runs, which definitely helps break up the hours.

We met up to run in CA over winter vacation and ran comfortably in the 11's and then two weeks ago, for my 16 miler, we held a pace that was in the 10's. How could I have not seen that progress happening? It's huge!

With this reassurance, I'm pretty confident in my goal to break 5 hours for the marathon (11:20-ish pace) and would like to actually achieve a sub-11 pace (4 hrs 45 minutes).

If some race day magic happens and I run 10:30's (4 hrs 35 minutes), I'll take it.

Before that though, I have to run my 18 and 20 milers and stay on top of my foam rolling.