Posted by Derek Lee-Wo on February 24th, 2007 in Races

I did my very first 10K race today. Prior to this, the only other race I have even run was a 5K on Nov 5 last year.

Would you believe that my biggest worry prior to the race was finding somewhere to park and being worried about roads being blocked off in downtown Ft. Worth. This turned out to be a non-issue. While roads were in fact blocked off, it didn’t affect me at all.

I got to the race area about 75 mins before the start of the race. It was dark, windy, wet, and bit chilly, but I managed to stay warm by hanging around the expo tent.

For the last couple days I’ve been thinking about what pace I should try and run the race in. I set a goal of breaking 1 hour so I figured I’d start at around my normal training pace of about 10min/mile and see how I feel, probably going to 9:00-9:30 for miles 2 and 3 and if I feel fine, pick up the pace a bit.

I started off on plan, but I have a very hard time keeping pace. Eventually I saw a woman that seemed to be running about the same pace I was going at and she seemed pretty consistent so I decided to sit just behind her and I stayed there until about mile 4.5. The course was surprisingly hilly. After going down the first hill just around mile 1, the only thing in the back of my mind is that I need to eventually run up a corresponding hill since the finish is about about 2 blocks from where we started. At one point of the course, we were going up and down over and over. This was especially tough for me since I don’t train on any hills at all. All my training miles have been on flat roads.

Around mile 5, I was starting to struggle, but I held on…just barely. It didn’t help that at that same time, we had an uphill hill to run.

Once I got past that hill, I was within 0.25 miles of the finish so I picked up the pace and passed several people. I even pushed and managed to pass another run about 1 foot from the finish. Once I was done, I came extremely close to throwing up. Coincidental as I was walking around and I saw the finish area of the 5K race, I saw one guy actually vomiting.

My eventual chip time was 1:00:50. I didn’t manage to break an hour. My overall pace was 9:49 min/mile which is basically what I run in training. I’m actually very disappointed in myself. My 5K time from 3.5 months ago was 30:11 so my 10K time isn’t actually any kind of improvement, despite the fact that I have so many more miles under my belt since my 5K race, including 30+ mile weeks for the last 6 weeks plus I’m 10lbs lighter!
Some lessons learned and things I need to work on include:

• I need to do some hill training
• I need to find a way to learn proper pacing. With proper pacing and time awareness, I could have certainly run each mile 10 seconds faster and finished within the hour.
• I need to figure out how much I can push myself earlier in the race. I ran the entire race at my training pace. I wasn’t breathing hard and could have probably carried on a conversation, but I’m afraid of running too fast early on in case I can’t finish.
• I need to figure out why I can race faster than I train.

I’ve been running consistently for 6 months now and doubts are starting to creep in to my mind as to whether I can actually be ready for a marathon in Dec!

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Posted by Derek Lee-Wo on February 22nd, 2007 in Training

This has been a very tough week so far. For all of the runs I had to do, I had to walk a bit, even on the shorter 6-mile runs. My legs just felt dead this week!! This is actually very discouraging as I’ve done a ton of 10-mile longs runs and a couple 12-miles runs, all without walking. As a matter of fact, it’s probably been months since I last had to take a walking break during a run.

I’ve been building my mileage and I’ve run 30+ miles for each of the last 5 weeks and I think it’s taking its toll now. The warmer weather we’re getting this week in TX certainly isn’t helping as it too is a bit draining.

I’m running my first 10K race this Saturday so I decided to take 2 consecutive rest days so I’ll be fresh on Saturday. I don’t know when last I’ve rested for 2 consecutive days!

I’ll probably run 30+ miles next week, but the following week I’m traveling on business so I’ll cut way back….maybe to 20 miles and try and get some well needed rest. Once I get back from my trip I’ll be pushing onwards as I make my way to 40 miles per week.

BTW, here is a composite picture I put together showing how I look now, and 3 years ago when I was 50+ lbs heavier:

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Posted by Derek Lee-Wo on February 18th, 2007 in Training

Yesterday I only needed to run 1.6 miles to make 35 miles for the week.  Since the distance was so short, I decided to see what pace I can run it at and maintain.  I started out at about a 7:15 min/mile, but that was obviously too fast  I had to walk after about 0.25 miles.  I continued to experiment and I found that a 8:30-9:00 felt like a pace I could maintain for a 10K race and even that might be pushing it.

I was rather disappointed.  After almost 6 months of pure base building and aerobic running, I was really hoping I could run an 8:00 min/mile pace for 10K, but it doesn’t seem as though that’s something that’s going to happen anytime soon.  In order to qualify for Boston, I need to run a full marathon at a 7:37 min/mile pace!!!

I need to do some research as I’m not sure what I should do next.  Should I continue doing pure aerobic running for the next several months?  Should I start to introduce some speed work?  I’m hoping to start my marathon training program for my December marathon at around the end of June.  That give me 4 months to try something different.  I’m leaning towards continuing to build my mileage and see if I can get up to 50 miles/week and maybe that aerobic base will allow me to run a bit faster.

The other disappointment with my trying to run faster is that my right knee was hurting!  When running slow, it hurts a bit, but is manageable and even stops hurting later in my runs, but at the faster pace, I was limping when I was done.

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Posted by Derek Lee-Wo on February 16th, 2007 in Gear

The shoes I’ve been using have 220 miles on them so I wanted to get a new pair so I can wear the new and old pairs for a few weeks of overlap. I’ve started getting some pains in the ball of my left foot so I figured that’s even more of a sign to go and get some new shoes.

The nearest running store to me is a New Balance store. I’ve never run in a NB shoe, but I decided to try them out.

The experience was actually quite pleasant. I went yesterady afternoon and they weren’t busy at all. Must be because it was mid-week. There was only one other customer and I didn’t feel bad monopolizing the time of one of the sales persons. The last time I went to a speciality running store, it was on a weekend and while the sales person there din’t rush me, I felt rushed as there were a lot of other customers milling around with no one to attend to them.

I took my current shoes and my previous shoes which had 240 miles on the them. The sales person examined the treadwear and eventually decided I needed a neutral cushoining shoe. The same diagnosis from the other running store.

I tried several pairs on, including one that didn’t look like a running shoe so I passed on it. I eventually bought a pair of 1061 shoes for $118 including taxes. These are the most expensive shoes I’ve bought so far. The shoes I’m running in were half the price at $60. I would have bought another pair of those, but it was a discontinued model when I bought them and I can’t find a size 12 anywhere online. The NB shoes I got are a 2007 model so if they work out, I should be able to find replacements quite easily.

The real test will be the next week or so. I’m hoping to do a 7-mile run today so I’ll try them out. I’ll use my older shoes for my long run on Sunday and then probably alternate the new and old shoes for a couple weeks.

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Posted by Derek Lee-Wo on February 11th, 2007 in Training

I’ve been reading up on various training schedules trying to decide which one I want to follow for my marathon in December. I’m pretty sure I’m going to do one of Pete Pftizinger’s schedules in his Advanced Marathoning book. There are a few problems I have with schedules that I found. They are:

• Most schedules seem to start on a Monday and show the weekly mileage on that basis. I prefer to have my week start on Sunday. The weekly mileage is a bit different depending on what day is used.
• I always have to work backwards from my marathon date to figure out when to start the plan and as I evaluate different length plans, it’s gets very tedious
• I like to have a printed plan showing what I would run on each day

To help with the above issues, I decided to put together a schedule generator which would let you choose your starting day of each week and also let you set the goal date. The schedule generator would then adjust the training plan based on your criteria and also let you create a 1-page PDF that you can print and stick on a wall.

I only have 4 training plans on there right now. Three from Pete Pfitzinger and one from Hal Higdon.

Visit the Training Plans and see what you think. I’ll add more plans over time.

Doing this small app was a good way for me to get my feet with with a new web framework called Django. If you’re into this sort of thing, you should check it out. I love it! It uses Python and for the first time, I didn’t feel like I was fighting with an environment. Elegant is the best word I can find to describe it. And this is from someone that hates writing web applications. I’m much more of a backend programmer.

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