After 5 weeks' worth of training for the Sunfeast 10K, I fell short of my sub-50 min target. My main mistake was to not get a timing-chip, as the timing-chip folks were let out on the track before the rest. I got very less stretches in the race where I could maintain a constant pace, as evidenced by the following chart.
Figure 1: Sunfeast 10K, Pace vs Distance
Notice how uneven the pace is across the whole distance. Other than from the 2KM mark to the 3.5 KM mark, the whole race is full of spikes. There is an exceptionally large one near the 7.5 KM mark, where I seem to have spent more than the usual time in avoiding slow folks. Even at the last 1KM stretch there is no change in the pace, forget a sprint.
Planning
Planning
At the end of last year, when I was just recovering from 2 weeks' worth of fever, I decided that I will do the full distance in 2009. And now that the Sunfeast 10K is over, it's the ideal time to start training.
I have chosen Hal Higdon's Novice 1 plan for training. But as the marathon which I'm planning to run is sooner than the duration of the plan, I have skipped 3 weeks and started from week 4.
Training goals (other than covering the distances in the plan):
- Do strength training -- I have neglected this quite a bit.
- Reduce the amount of crap which I eat.
- Drop a few kilos to run better.
- As this is my first, the goal is just to finish. It's an automatic PB.
6 comments:
Thats still quite a time you got there. I know the decimals do play on the mind :) But still this is 50 minutes. I guess a sub 50 is really a time to look forward to, simply because not many are able to do it, less than 8% of those who used chips, and probably lesser overall. All the best for the upcoming marathons!
Thanks Tanvir. I'm all excited for the training, but slightly concerned that I don't get distracted by my speed. As in, I don't know what pace to run at, or what pace to aim for.
how did the graph thingie come about?..ur garmin?
Yes. I can connect it to the computer and it gives me all this.
Its great to see someone target a Sub-50 coz this is my first Sunfeast and I dondt have any targets in mind. Would have liked to finish sub-55 but did 58:37. I know its not good at all, but writing it off always eases off the pressure a bit and makes you more concerned about your performance and I am sure i ll improve in the coming months. I have planned a Marathon schedule for myself and will circulate it to you too. I don't know how we can cope up with breaks due to travel and unintentional breaks like rains etc. Sunfeast was my first public running event. I want to do KTM but heard from lot of ppl that even the ppl who prepare for the full feel difficult to cope up with the heat and humidity. Do you suggest any training for that too? No one stresses a lot on strengthening among the regular Cubbon Park runners and I want to change it, it ll also lead to less injuries. Maybe someone senior like Pankaj can give a spotlight on injuries for fellow RFLers and then lets see how we can improve the situation. I would also share some material already circulated on RFL and some blogs and maybe we keep a store-of-all-good-info at a common place ( esp the links ).
@SmartKid: Yes, last year's KTM was hard due to heat and humidity, but that was mostly because of the late start. From what I could gather, the bus from Bangalore left pretty late and the FM started somewhere around 8AM.
I don't plan to train for heat and humidity, but I'm going to do strength training. It's going to be distributed across the weekdays, as that's the time when I run on the office gym treadmill. I plan to do the ones suggested here.
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