What a Day That Was

I raced in the second running of the "Nissan Ten Miler" this morning. Not a politically correct distance in metric days, but there you go. Call it the "Sixteen K'er". Yesterday I cycled 120K with a friend, this morning I cycled 7K down to the race (and then back again). So the legs were well warmed up (make that worn out). It rained a bit as I traveled down and the forecast suggested that we might have thundershowers at the start time. In the end it was merely overcast and a bit windy. However it was pretty humid, so it was a hot run. Yesterday was crazy humid, on my long ride my friend and I had to give up on our sunglasses because of the heavy fogging.

The 21K run I did last weekend in Peterborough as the final leg of my Half Ironman had been a lot slower than I'm capable of, so I had something to prove to myself. That run had been at a pace of 5:20 per K while I normally train at a pace of around 4:45 per K. Well today I dug in and managed a pace of 4:19 per K! I'm quite pleased with myself. My heart rate averaged 163 and peaked at 183, which translates as an average of 87% and a peak of 98%. The peak was achieved during the finish line sprint...

Here are the numbers: 1:09:11.6 final time at a pace of 4:19/K. 97/778 overall men, 13/107 in the M45 - 49 category. A pretty even gun time split of 34:07 out and 35:17 back. I'll stick a few photos in here when they are online.

My training plan called for a three hour run today so I'm almost two hours short, but that's racing. I'd prefer to see my plan specify distances instead of time, a three hour run is getting close to a full marathon distance for me, which isn't something to recover from in a day. For me a two hour run is probably more useful at this point. Maybe I need a "higher performance" training schedule.

Hancock. A story of love and redemption. Make that a story of redemption and then love. Chris and I saw this film last night. Some good moments, primarily in the first half, but it took an interesting concept (underachieving sarcastic superhero) and squeezed the life out of it. It seems to be doing well enough at the box office though. Will Smith was good, Jason Bateman was great, but Charlize Theron couldn't overcome her unrealistic character.

Listening to: What a Day That Was by Talking Heads from Stop Making Sense.