post race data analysis ad nauesum - moab half race report

What a difference a year 11 months makes

11 months ago (6 months after I took up running) I was at the tail end of training for my first ever half marathon.  My lofty(to me) goal was to run a sub-2 hour.  On April 15,2012, I ran my first Half Marathon and I ran a 2:01:38 (boo!)   On May 19, 2012, I accomplished my goal on my 2nd attempt and ran a 1:57:18.

Fast forward to the present.  I'm training for my first marathon.   I'm using a couple of back-to-back weekend half marathons as training runs - a challenging trail half that was last weekend and the Moab Half was yesterday.

The plan for the Moab race is to have a hard run to stimulate stress, but not truly race it so I could be recovered enough to increase my training load this week.  I knocked out a 1:58:42 on a rolling (77 net downhill) course.   To think that was my big goal for last year was a sub-2 and now I can knock out a sub-2 on a training run,  that makes me happy to see how much progress I have made in a year.

Friends make my life even better

I'm keeping this section short as I'm gonna to focus on data analysis - but I had great travel companions.  No drama, no stress - just lots of fun. See pictures below

Kathy, Terzah, me - waiting at the start

still waiting

Terzah feeling up some guy's bunny ears.  :)

we rode in style in the Audi - Kathy looks a like a teenager

The data

Ok...now the fun part.  The plan was to run by zone PE.   I had no idea what my pace would be with HR and PE being my guide.  Let the chips fall where they may. 

The race plan was to start conservatively with a mid-zone 3 PE for miles 1 -3, for miles 3 - 9  take it up to a high z3/low z4, 9 - 9.5 take the biggest hill on the course easy and not spike the HR, 10 - 11.5 mid-z4, 11.5 - 13.1 high z4.

Here's how it played out

• yellow arrow shows where mile 3 ended - I'm happy there is an obvious jump in effort
• green arrow shows were mile 9 ended - HR jump not as obvious, but the HR trend is. 
• This shows how much I was holding back - this makes me happy
• My splits are consistent for the terrain

Super stoked my decoupled rate was 2.11% - this makes me VERY happy.  The explanation for the term "decoupled" can be found here.  But basically it determines how much heart rate drift there is - which is an indicator of fitness. 

This is key comment in the decoupled article

Negative splitting

I wasn't consiously attempting to negative split - again I was just following the plan.   I negative split by 3 seconds.  Most of the elevation gain is in the 2nd half of the race. My avg pace for the entire race was ~8:50(I need to work on my tangent running) -  the last 6.6 the part of the course with the most elevation gain was 8:50 (NGP was 8:38 !) 

1st half of the race

2nd half of the race

Sea Level estimate

Of course I'm curious about what my time estimate would be at sea level.  Luckily on the internets there's a calculator for that.( www.runworks.com/calculator.html )  My 1:58:42 is equivalent to a 1:54:25.  Eugene is a sea level.  I know it probably isn't exact, but it definitely gives me more confidence.

 
Results

I finished 19th out of 125 in AG - 15%, 451 out of 1875 in gender - 24%. Again - super stoked my AG is so strong and so deep.

 
Final thoughts:


It was nice seeing how the numbers played out afterward.   I had no idea what to expect timewise - I was guessing anywhere from a 1:55 - 2:10.   I'm am cautiously optomistic about Eugene.  It will still be very, very tough to reach my goal, but I think I'm on the right track!