Racing Retrospective

Before I get to actually writing a report on how the marathon went, I have a flashback post on how far I've come.

I’ve been on TeamZ for a while now, and just had my 6th Winter “A” Race. Every one has felt like an accomplishment, a wonderful step forward. All of these steps have gotten me farther than I’d thought possible.

TL;DR: I raced my first marathon and finished in 4:24, which beat all of my goals for the race. Once upon a time, I ran a half in 3:16, which beat all of my goals for that race.

Here are some numbers:

Year	Race	Time	Pace	Goal
2010	Shamrock Half Marathon	3:16	15:00	Run Z2, maybe 16:00 pace?
2011	Shamrock Half Marathon	3:05	14:10	Improve from last year using new Z2 numbers
2012	DC Rock N Roll Half Marathon	2:57	13:32	Improve from Shamrock, even with hills
2013	Myrtle Beach Half	2:52	13:09	Beat LRP pace of 13:45
2014	Shamrock Half Marathon	2:35	11:50	Negative split it, average pace around 12:00
2015	RNR Full Marathon	4:24	10:05	Negative split it, average pace around 10:30

I was so excited in 2010 to see my running buddy in front of me as I came within a few miles of finishing. I was able to catch up enough that we finished together after training together and having so many new-longest runs together

2011 gave me my first experience of a running injury. Surprisingly, ignoring my angry Achilles didn’t actually make it get better, so coming back to run the RnR Half Marathon in 2012 felt a little like starting over from scratch, but this time with a hilly race at the end of the training! Val caught this photo of me towards the beginning — on my way to a 10K PR, followed by 6 miles of fade, but a healthy run and a Half marathon PR.

In 2012, we started using pace-based training as a companion to heart rate, so I gave that a try and was super excited to run most of the 2013 Myrtle Beach Half Marathon with paces in the 12’s! I still faded a lot towards the end and had unplanned walk breaks. In the winter of 2013, I started working with Rebecca and added nutrition to the things I was thinking about, in addition to training. When the 2014 Shamrock Half Marathon came around, I was under 200 lbs and super excited to race my most disciplined race yet. I wanted to run faster and smarter, and managed to do that — negative splitting the half marathon, and, wow, it is awesome to feel strong at the end, instead of feeling beat down. I really recommend it!

This year, I am getting ready to do my first Ironman, and step n+1 of that was to train for and run a stand-alone marathon. I picked RNR because it is hillier than Shamrock, and Chattanooga also has a hilly run. I trained well, and raced well and had an amazing result. I’ve awarded myself the prize of “best first marathon” because I maintained focus, negative split the race, and beat my goals. I have a lot more to say about this particular race, and the training leading up to it, but felt like a flashback post was needed, so that’s what you get.

Help, my bottle is freezing! (Part 1)

Long winter runs become extra miserable if you're a sports-drink-nutrition kind of person and if your bottles freeze while you are out frolicking in the freeze.

Facing my (first ever) 20 miler in mid-February, and also looking at temperatures in the teens (Farenheit), I dug through my ancient chemistry memory to figure out if I was going to have a Skratch-pop before the end of the run.

The principle that I wanted to use was "freezing point depression." I know that adding salt to roads helps lower the freezing point so the roads are less icy, and I know I'm drinking an electrolyte mix, so how low does the freezing point of Skratch get?

TL;DR: Even a double-concentrated Skratch mix will give you a Skratch-sicle, sorry!

1. Assumptions:
• Pure water, acting like pure water
• Wild guesses on the concentration of the ingredients that come from the Skratch mix 
• No accounting for jostling that will actually come from running
• No accounting for body heat keeping the bottle warm (hopefully most of my heat stays inside my jacket)
2. Background:
•  According to my sister, Dr. Chemist, and wikipedia, the formula I was trying to remember is 
  • ΔT_F = K_F · b · i
• DeltaT_F is the change in the solvent's freezing point temperature (in Celsius) 
  
• K_f is called the cryoscopic constant, and the internet believes that you should mostly look this up in books if you are trying to figure this out for things other than water, or like, ethanol (spoiler alert for part 2 of this post)
• b is the place where some chemistry is going to really kick in because I have to calculate the "molality" of the stuff. Flashback to Mole Day celebrations, which are way less delicious than Pi Day celebrations
  
• i is the "Van 't Hoff factor" and has to do with how many ions the dissolved stuff splits into.
  
3. K_F - For water, this value is 1.86. A bigger K_F means that the same mixture (assuming same dissolution) would have a bigger temperature shift, so too bad Benzene is toxic (K_F of 5.12)
4. b - Molality is moles of "stuff" per kilogram solvent. For Skratch, I have decided there are three main kinds of stuff, aka solute.



Reference source for wild guesses for solutes

• To calculate molality, I had to first find the number of moles of each of the compounds I'm interested in.
• The molar mass of a compound comes from adding up the atomic weight of the elements, or from looking it up on the internet, and it's units are grams/mole.
• My ingredients are
• Sugar - 20 grams
• Sodium Citrate -  0.36 grams
• Potassium Citrate - 0.04 grams
• From the nutrition information from Skratch, and from wikipedia, I was able to calculate the number of moles of each as shown in the table below

Skratch Content	Grams	Molar mass (moles/gram)	Moles (grams / molar mass)
Sugar	20	342.3	0.05
Sodium Citrate	0.36	258.0	0.0013
Potassium Citrate	0.04	306.4	0.00013

• Next, I have to figure out how many grams of water I am dissolving these in. I'll be making the Skratch with 2 scoops in a 20 oz bottle, or 1 scoop per 10 oz. 10 oz of water weighs about 300 g. I've updated the table with a new column for this data. The tiny values are making me not feel too optimistic about this calculation

Skratch Content	g	m	Moles (grams / molar mass)	Molality, (mol/kg), b
Sugar	20	342.3	0.05	0.19
Sodium Citrate	0.36	258.0	0.0013	0.0046
Potassium Citrate	0.04	306.4	0.00013	0.0004

5. i is the number of ions the things split into. For this, I drew on the expertise of my sister again
• Sugar - 1 - no splitting
• Sodium Citrate - 3 - Three sodium
• Potassium Citrate - 3 - Three potassium
6. Calculation

Skratch Content	Molality, (mol/kg), b	i	ΔTF = KF · b · i
Sugar	0.19	1	0.19
Sodium Citrate	0.0046	3	0.013
Potassium Citrate	0.0004	3	0.001

• ΔT_F = 0.19 + 0.01 + 0.001 = 0.39 degrees Celsius change
• Sadly this is only 31.3 degrees Farenheit, so given Saturday's weather was in the teens, I would have had a Skratch-sicle

Next up, will a Skratch-cocktail solve my problem? Will I still be able to run 20 miles without getting tipsy?

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.