Sri Chinmoy Princes Park


Keeping on track with my plan to run 60km on my 60th birthday, I considered it good preparation to cover at least 32km for my 32nd. So I headed down to Princes Park to run the Sri Chinmoy 30km and make up the extra kilometres with the warm up and cool down. I covered an extra 2km just to make sure.
A cold start soon warmed up enough when the sun spread across some relatively clear skies to create almost perfect race conditions. The wind was a tad strong, but nothing to slow things down. It felt strange lining up to race with the plan to hold back. I had to remind myself plenty of times it was simply a test to see if things were on track for the marathon.
The plan was simple, start easy, then ease into a pace that was equivalent to about a 2:57:30 marathon. That meant a time of about 2:07:00 for the 30km, or about 4:12/km. During the race I didn't check heart rate, it was all based on pace.
Six laps of 5km went as follows:
lap 1 21:55, 4:23/km HR: 150
lap 2 20:40, 4:08/km HR: 157
lap 3 20:54, 4:10/km HR: 157
lap 4 21:00, 4:12/km HR: 158
lap 5 21:03, 4:12/km HR: 159
lap 6 21:06, 4:13/km HR: 162

That gave me an overall time of 2:06:38, HRav 157, 4:13/km and 16th place overall. More importantly was how I felt. The first lap I definitely went too easy and felt I could comfortably get away with chasing down a little time while fresh over lap 2. Then the rest of the day was fairly comfortable. At no stage did I feel the need to slow down, just required a fair increase in concentration over the last 4km to make sure I didn't accidently slow down.
This far out from the marathon and with plenty of hard training to come, I am confident that going under 3 hours is very doable. Of course those last 12,195m can provide some decent challenges that makes the marathon what it is. Maybe it will help to think I have over 2 months to simply work that part.

Comments

  1. Hamburglar28 July 2009 at 23:02

    That's a great run and some very encouraging signs so far out from race day. I am thinking that even faster is not out of the question. Keep up the good training.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ewen29 July 2009 at 15:58

    The numbers look good Jason. Just a slightly higher HR on the last lap. How does 157 sit as a % of your max?

    Anyway, still time for further improvement - a sub 2:55 marathon doesn't seem out of the question.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tea30 July 2009 at 10:32

    YEA! Very good race! Two more months to wrap this training up. Stick with it, my friend. You are doing great!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Deniz Vural30 July 2009 at 19:55

    Hello good Sir,

    I tried to find your contact/email details on this blog to no avail.

    I work for adidas sports marketing and I'm reaching out to running bloggers like yourself with whom we talk to regularly and offer previews into the world of adidas running.

    If this sounds interesting you can send me an email to deniz.vural@adidas.com and I'll send you more details on this.

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    ReplyDelete
  5. Unknown30 July 2009 at 22:02

    Jason, happy birthday to you and congrats on a fine effort. I wondered which one of the many 'fast dudes' you were!

    Hard to imagine how you won't achieve your marathon goal.

    Keep up the great work.

    Cheers, PB

    ReplyDelete

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