On Sunday I would be doing my third half marathon, norcal half, of the season. So far the only goals I always had for any race had been the time goals. But this one is different. I am not gunning for time. Being in the middle of my first full marathon training and no proper tapper this week I have very modest expectations about my times. So instead I figure I can use this race for trying out few things that I plan to do differently for MCM. In reality, when I was planning the races my thought was always to use this race as a training race for MCM. For some reasons, I always feel confident if I try out things in race environment rather than in training runs. So here are my goals that I plan to achieve in this race.
1) Get a proper warm in: I did not do that at SF half and paid the price after the race. So for this one I definitely plan to get to start point early and get a good warm up in.
2) Stay in the race. I always thought I was doing it right but SF half was a good reminder. Once I had bad experience on the bridge I was completely out of the race. I just wanted to get done with it and in that moment my nutrition plan went for a toss and I had a very uncomfortable second half and finish. So for this race I plan to stay in the race for whole 13.1 miles irrespective of the conditions or state I am in and not let my mind wander..
3)Go hands free. This one is really important and something I have been working on in training runs. I started running with fuel belt around my waist last year. For some reason I was never comfortable with fuel belts or as a matter of fact anything around my waist. I bought (and tried) pretty much everything out there in market. One bottle, 4 bottle, 3 bottle, no bottle and only pouch to carry nutrition. All of them either end up chaffing me or are really uncomfortable. This year I made the change to one bottle setup in hand. For shorter runs this works well. But for anything over a hour it starts hurting my hand. I have to keep alternating the bottle between two hands. I also feel it locks up the hand holding the bottle thereby screwing up my natural running gait. So for training runs I have been experimenting with not carrying anything with me (except nutrition). Because all of my longs runs with team asha have a water stop (~2-3 miles) I have started training my body to go without fluid for that much distance. This is what I also plan to do at MCM so its really important to try this out at norcal half and take mental notes on how I feel towards the end. At norcal half, water stops are ~2.25 miles apart so this would be perfect mileage to try it out. Other important thing is to take a "real" break at water stop and drink sufficient fluid instead of flying through it without taking sufficient amount of fluid
On the same lines, try taking gel every 30 mins (~220 cal/hr). So far for half marathon distance I have been able to run without any gel but that would not work for MCM and I plan to take gel every 30 mins (atleast in the beginning part of race) so this would be good time to try it out in race environment and see how my body reacts to it.
I do have few other small goals but above 3 are the most important one that I want to achieve.
Good luck every one racing this weekend !!
1) Get a proper warm in: I did not do that at SF half and paid the price after the race. So for this one I definitely plan to get to start point early and get a good warm up in.
2) Stay in the race. I always thought I was doing it right but SF half was a good reminder. Once I had bad experience on the bridge I was completely out of the race. I just wanted to get done with it and in that moment my nutrition plan went for a toss and I had a very uncomfortable second half and finish. So for this race I plan to stay in the race for whole 13.1 miles irrespective of the conditions or state I am in and not let my mind wander..
3)Go hands free. This one is really important and something I have been working on in training runs. I started running with fuel belt around my waist last year. For some reason I was never comfortable with fuel belts or as a matter of fact anything around my waist. I bought (and tried) pretty much everything out there in market. One bottle, 4 bottle, 3 bottle, no bottle and only pouch to carry nutrition. All of them either end up chaffing me or are really uncomfortable. This year I made the change to one bottle setup in hand. For shorter runs this works well. But for anything over a hour it starts hurting my hand. I have to keep alternating the bottle between two hands. I also feel it locks up the hand holding the bottle thereby screwing up my natural running gait. So for training runs I have been experimenting with not carrying anything with me (except nutrition). Because all of my longs runs with team asha have a water stop (~2-3 miles) I have started training my body to go without fluid for that much distance. This is what I also plan to do at MCM so its really important to try this out at norcal half and take mental notes on how I feel towards the end. At norcal half, water stops are ~2.25 miles apart so this would be perfect mileage to try it out. Other important thing is to take a "real" break at water stop and drink sufficient fluid instead of flying through it without taking sufficient amount of fluid
On the same lines, try taking gel every 30 mins (~220 cal/hr). So far for half marathon distance I have been able to run without any gel but that would not work for MCM and I plan to take gel every 30 mins (atleast in the beginning part of race) so this would be good time to try it out in race environment and see how my body reacts to it.
I do have few other small goals but above 3 are the most important one that I want to achieve.
Good luck every one racing this weekend !!
Good luck! I'd suggest you wait an hour to an hour and a half then start taking the gels every 30 to 45 minutes like clock work. Make sure you test it out during the longer training runs. Have fun out there!
ReplyDeleteThanks Coach Char!! That makes sense. In this race will take first gel at 1 hr mark and then another at 1:30-1:45 mark. I am still trying out different time intervals in training runs to figure out what works best for me :)
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