2014/10/26 - Vancouver Rock 'n' Roll half marathon race report

2014 Vancouver Rock n Roll Race half marathon race report:

This is one of the bigger race milestone since I started training again in August, so I had relatively high expectation to perform at Vancouver. Leading up to the race, I was doing my long runs the last couple weekends. All of those runs, except one, was dissatisfied, but I was feeling I was improving, perceived exertion wise, heart rate, pace, etc. 

My biggest goal was to PR at this race; honestly speaking, I wasn't too confident heading to the race. The main reason being that my half marathon PR was set last year at Portland RnR at 1:49, a 8:16 pace. I couldn't even coming close to that pace, for the distance, for the last couple weeks of training.... oh well, it is what it is, I was just giving myself unnecessary pressure.

I wasn't all that nervous the week of the race, or I have learn not to. We drove up to Vancouver late Saturday morning, picked up the pakcage at the expo, walked around the booths and there wasn't any surprised or goodies, then we went for lunch, checked in hotel and just tried to relax a bit before dinner. Our hotel is right across the street from the finish line, so I got to see the park from our room and they were finishing up the setup for the finish line concert stage.

race morning:

woke up at 6:30am, ate breakfast at the hotel and walked over to the start line, which is 10-15 minutes away. The walk was a bit cold but I decided to wear only one long sleeve top instead of adding a jacket, which was a good decision because I knew I would get overheat if I had the jacket with me during the run.

After I got to the start line, there were already hundreds, if not thousands of people there. I got there about 15-20 minutes before the start, so I ran around the block to check out the area and warm up. Did a bit stretching and some dynamic warm up also and get ready for the start. Lessons learned from history that my heart rate would go absolutely crazy before any races, so I tried to warm up until my HR calmed down to a stable level, then I just stayed calm. However, HR was still jumping around quite a bit. I got into my corral and waited and tried to calm down and get ready, HR did went down to 90 ish so I was ready.

However, once the people from first corral took off, my HR jumped back to 120 ish instantly, surprise surprise... I was in 4th corral so it wasn't the time to worry about HR anymore, I just got ready and run.

Almost every single run races that I did, I started way too fast and ended up blowing up. for this race, after I started, I kept on reminding myself to slow down. Also, I knew that the sweet spot for HR is about 170 ish, and I was slowly pushing up to that point.

In about 4 minutes according to Garmin, HR settled around low 170s, that was good.

The first couple miles went fine, I was only able to keep pace around 8:30 ish for at least the first 9 miles. Inside of me, I was kinna disappointed and discourage that I was not going to PR, it wasn't my day.

(that was a reminder, I had no idea how was able to ran the whole Portland RnR at 8:15 1.5 years ago, but I was pushing pretty hard and I am still 15 seconds short,)

It's ok, I knew that I can't always PR every single time I race anytime, so it's ok.

The next 4-5 miles was painful, I was already semi blew up, but I needed to push harder, at least it felt that way but the pace is saying otherwise. I slowed way down to 9:15-9:45 pace from mile 9 to mile 13. All bad things had happened within that couple miles, I started to cramp, I have choked on jel, my bib came off the race belt as I was adjusting it, etc etc.. and I just kept moving forward.
I was doing math along the way, since I wasn't going to PR, I was aiming to finish inside of 2 hours.

I kept on moving forward until i see, hear and feel the finish line, then all of a sudden I got this energy out of nowhere and I picked it up and start sprinting to the finish line. According to Garmin, I was able to run at 6:50/m pace for the last quarter mile. it was painful passing that finish line, I felt that my lung was going to explode, I took a break on the side, got my water and Gatorade and found Mabel waiting for me at the finish line.

finish time: 1:55:47

average pace: 8:45 min/mi

average HR: 177bpm

lesson learn:
*HR is still crazy for races, unpredictable, and usually at least 20 bpm higher than training.

*I wasn't prepared mentally to break my PR at  this race. For some reason, I've been thinking that my PR was at low 1:40s, in fact, it was 1:49. If I knew that I was only short of 6 min of PR, instead of more than 10 minutes, or focusing going from 8:45 pace to 8:15 pace, I may have a better chance of making it. 5 min is easier to swallow for some weird reason.

*Bad pacing - still running way too fast at the beginning of the race, so the second half was more painful, and slow. Need to focus and train at better pacing.

*mental game, I have too many excuses to slow down when I am hurting.

*continue from the last points, if I was ok after passing the finish line without puking and falling to the ground, I didn't push myself hard enough! Needs to be painful!!