Saturday, October 17, 2015

Victoria Goodlife Half Marathon 2015 race report, with some cyclocross thrown in for extra fun



I returned to Victoria for the Goodlife Half Marathon again. I hadn’t really trained properly for a long all-running race, but I knew I could finish it. My goal once again was to finish in under 2:00, and hopefully beat my time from last year. I went out faster than last year, but not super fast. Last year I was too cautious at the start. I didn’t want to get caught up in the rush and flag later, which was smart, but that meant I got stuck behind a lot of slower runners that were hard to pass and it cost me time. So I positioned myself better at the start and went out a little harder. Not too fast, but fast enough that I saved about 20 seconds in the first two kms.

It was a beautiful day to run. I wore short sleeves this year, as I was too warm last year. I still carried my own liquids and gels. I don’t really like running in a water belt, but I’ve found that my stomach really prefers the familiar on race day, so I do it anyway. I used 3 gels and drank most of the one small bottle of Nuun water that I carried.

My 10 km time was more than 2.5 minutes faster this year than last. And my overall time was 1:52:14, which is more than 3.5 minutes faster than last year. (I tweeted out a bigger improvement. Turns out I was computing the difference between last year's gun time and this year's chip time) I was hoping to beat 1:52, but in the end just couldn’t find the energy to keep up the pace over the last 5 km. But given my lack of long distance training, I can’t be too upset by my result. I placed in the top 1/6th of my age group (31/206), which is an improvement over last year too (63/302) although I did age up this year.

But it was a really great weekend. Husband and kidlet did a cyclocross race on Saturday before we headed over to the island. I didn’t ride because I wanted to save my legs for the half marathon. Unfortunately, I injured myself a little when helping out with the kids race (helping lift bikes over the barriers). I tripped over the barrier and scraped myself up. But it looked worse than it felt (although a week later I have a bruised and swollen foot in addition to the scrapes on my shin and hand). I was worried it would hurt while I ran, but it wasn’t actually too bad.

This was shortly after I skinned my shin, it got worse (looking) with more time.


Then on the Monday, the day after the run, we all went and did a Cross on the Rock cylcocross race. (Apparently it might have been the largest cx race in Canadian history. If so, totally cool that we were there for it. If not, it was still a super fun event.) My legs let me know after the first lap that this was a crazy idea, but it was super fun anyway. I got very muddy, and now feel like a legit cyclocross rider. I was not a kid who liked playing in the mud, but it's fun now. Or at least it's fun on the bike now. I’ll never be fast at it, but cyclocross has been really good for my bike-handling skills and overall comfort level on the bike.




2 comments:

  1. It looks and sounds like you have found yourself a new sport! Interesting about it helping your bike handling skills...I never feel quite at home on a bike. It would be really great to feel confident someday.

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    Replies
    1. I'm finding just spending more time on the bike overall is helping. I commute 1-2 days a week too, and am getting more comfortable around traffic that way. Of course, my commuting bike and my cyclocross bike have different geometry and set ups to my road bike, so we'll see how it translates to the road bike. But for me, just feeling less jumpy on the bike is a victory and that definitely carries over. (Yes, I have 3 bikes, actually 4 - I have another cheap one I keep at work for getting around. We got rid of our second car a few years ago, and decided to see if we could make do without it. It's been OK, mostly because we substitute biking and use car2go if we really need to transport more people/stuff.)

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