2014 Seattle half marathon race report

2014 Seattle half marathon race report

This year is my 10th anniversary for half marathon, it all started 10 years ago from a dare with Stephen Wong, and now I'm helpless and became an addict, the good type.

How aim gonna celebrate?  I was gonna run it again and PR it!

My previous PR was last year at Portland Rock 'n' Roll half marathon, finished at 1:49:15 at 8:19 pace. 

Today, I haven't checked the official time yet, the watch says 8:17 pace for 13.23 miles, I was going about 2 second faster which comes does to about 30 second PR, it's not much, but I'll take it.

Had a good night of sleep last night, woke up, got changed and ate breakfast. I exited the freeway at 6:45 and thought I had a lot of time because the race started at 7:30, I was wrong! South lake union was a mess, by the time I got close to the start line and parked the car, I had about 10 minutes spare. I parked about 5 blocks away so I ran over as the warmup and the run was about to start.

Heart rate was crazy as normal, so I didn't even bother to look at it; in fact, I totally ignored HR today, it was a distraction to me in previous races.

After the start, I was looking at the watch and it didn't look right, was messing with the watch because it wasn't set to running mode.

Pacing wasn't consistent, I was going anywhere between 9 something to sub 8. I was happy that the fastest 3 miles or so happened at the end, the fact that I struggled so much about pacing and mental game before, I need to pad myself on the back for the negative split today.

Mental game was good as mentioned above, the last 1/3 started to struggle and wanted to slow down so many times, but I didn't for a single time, I even dragged myself up all the hills.

When I turned into the stadium and couldn't sprint anymore, I think I did a good job throughout the run and squeeze everything out of myself.

The last 3 miles or so was sub 8.

Very satisfied with the result, especially the condition was way worse than Portland. It was low 20s in the morning, my hands started to hurt a bit at the beginning, then they get really painful and eventually I didn't feel them anymore. Also, the Gatorade at the water stations had ice in them, and the GU jel was more like toffee candy than jel. There was ice throughout the course, it's good that the sun was out. Very nice running weather despite of the freezing cold temperature.

I'm very excited about the next race and next year, I know that my training is paying off! Yeah!!

Thanks for reading

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!!

My First Marathon, EVER..... Victoria

My first full distance marathon... ever - Victoria full.

After IM Whistler
it's been about 6 weeks after Whistler IM, of course I have managed to lose fitness, gain weight, and eat tons of ice cream. For the past 2 years, it's always been the same, I would jump start my fat-gaining process right after my A-race of the season. To be honest, the best I could do is damage control, try to shorten my rest/recovery period after the A-race, start my training as early as possible, work out as much as I can and eat the least amount of junk.

Mini Victoria getaway
Besides running the full marathon myself, Mabel is also running her fourth half marathon on her birthday! I am very proud of her, most people party and pig out on their birthday, who would run on their birthday, let along a half marathon! That was the main reason she signed up for the Victoria run. The other reason is because they have nice runner shirt! take a look below.

However, I just want to ask, how come the women's colors are always better? Men colors are so boring!

On the drive to Canada, of course we stopped by the Nike outlet and saw this bright neon green/yellow shows, for $35. Too bad it's not comfortable at all, NOT AT ALL. I would've just bought every single last pair of them if they are just borderline comfortable.

This is the before picture, I look terrible. We woke up early in the morning, had breakfast and got ready for the run. The nice thing about staying at a hotel right next to the starting line. I walked Mabel to the start line, waited for couple minutes and off she go!

I watched a couple more minutes and decided to go back to the room, I turned around and realized that the runners running on the other side. So, I decided to watch and cheer for a little bit and 'hope' that I would see Mabel. Before I realized she's right there and waved at me. I yelled 加油 to encourage her.













Food, food, food, food, and food.... and food

After the run, we went back to the hotel and showered, took a break and started to look online for food. We found this place there seems to be a lot of good brunch places around victoria. 

This is the corn beef harsh that Mabel ordered, a side order and it's HUGE. I think she ate it all, lol.

And waffle

And I ordered the 222 Special (I think that's the name), two eggs, sausage and two HUGE pancakes. that's way too much food that I could even imagine, I think I ate 1/4 of one pancage, lol...

This is the before picture, we were too full after eating and wasn't able to take a picture after that cause we were holding our tummy.

Did I mention that it was Mabel's big day? And we ran a full and half marathon that morning? yeah, i think I did, so we were too sore and painful to walk or even drive anywhere, we ended up eating at the hotel
I would want to say this is our best meal while in Victoria.

Mabel ordered Foie Gras for appetizer and I got the oysters. The oysters were just ok, nothing special. However, Mabel's Foie Gras was super delicious.

The duck breast was very good too. On the other hand, my lamb rack was just so so, it's still good, but it's just average good.

The best part of dinner is the dessert. They have this chocolate ball with some berry (i forgot if it was strawberry or raspberry) chocolate inside. When it came, it was whole ball and you didn't know what's i there. The server poured chocolate syrup on top of it, and 10~15 seconds later, the top part opened up and you see inside, pretty fancy! one of the most beautiful dessert i have had. 

The server was nice, but forgetful, haha..... When we made reservation, I told them that it's my wife birthday but nothing different special happened during dinner. Only after we got back to our room, somebody knocked on the door and there you go the birthday cake/dessert. 

The next morning is about more eating. We had breakfast at the hotel. My Benedict is fancy, they use cream puff for the bread and there's crab cake for the usual ham, pretty good.

Before we head back to Seattle, we booked massage at the hotel that morning. I would it's average given the price, but I love how I got the whole place to myself! Mabel and I used the mineral pool, sauna and steam room, not bad... not bad...

When we were looking for dinner on Saturday night, we randomly found this place. It was so packed and people were lining up outside the restaurant. Later we found out that they don't take reservation and we were just trying our luck on Monday before driving back to Seattle. Luckily, the wait wasn't bad at all and we got to try this place. 

I don't think I tried Mabel's lunch, or did I? Mine was just spaghetti with meatball and it was really good.

And out final meal, late night 'snack's at Jack in the box before really heading back to Seattle.

That's it for now, i know it's getting way too long and I am having a hard time staying focus.

Until next time.

2013 Ironman Canada Whistler Race Report

Pre-Race
People talk about feeling ‘different’ for tapering, and my taper was bad. While I was cutting training volume (but not raising intensity), my hamstrings were tight and sore. Mentally, I was burnt out after months of training; I was so ready to race and get it over with!! Somebody mentioned that I may have peaked too early. Whatever the case was, that was going on for about 2 weeks before the race.
I am the type that would get super nervous and excited about races, so I tried to minimize the time being at the race venue before the race. We drove up on Friday, had a packed schedule, which helped me to keep my mind busy. Checked in, meet up with friends and cycle U, then attended the welcome ceremony and the mandatory meeting, fun and busy day!
While I was packing, I decided to put my heart rate monitor in T1 bag, instead of wearing it to the start, which I normally do. I am not sure if it has any significant to my race, but something ‘new’ that I did for the race. More about this in T1 below.
Also, lesson learned from last year. Last year, I was so nervous the day before the race, I also told myself I couldn’t go sleep in the afternoon because I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. Big mistake! I ended up not getting any sleep at all.
This year, I took a nap here and there, stayed relax on Saturday and I actually had a good couple hours of sleep. I woke up around 1am, went back to sleep and had another 2~3 ok hours of sleep.

Race Morning
Again, I tried to minimize idle time but I woke up a bit too early. However, it was relatively uneventful that everything went pretty smoothly. Checked in the specialty bags, took the shuttle bus to the lake, pumped tires, wiped the bikes, unwrapped all the food, eat, drink, switched to low gear, checked brakes, put on my wet suit and ready to go. Was going to take a look at my T1 bag, but I figured it was ready and I was running out of time, so didn’t do that. Managed to get a short ~5 min warm up and I was ready to go.

Swim
The swim was a floating start; I planned to start at the beach, or somewhere I didn’t have to tread water. But thanks to Moses, we swam out and started by the start-line. It was a good decision because treading water wasn’t that bad at all, and there was a lot more space than expected, a lot of people did start on the beach. I was relatively calm and not nervous before the start.
My main goal for all swims is to stay calm, get into a pace and just keep on moving forward, which I did. I used to swim all over the place due to bad sighting, looking at the GPS data, seems like I did good this time, but I still ended up swimming ~2.6 miles I swam the whole thing relatively on course, I didn’t get punched or kicked or anything, I had a good swim! I am happy with my swim.
Note: The only bad thing was foggy goggle; I did stop couple times at the beginning and tried to clear it up. But then I gave up, it just kept on happening. I still yet to find a solution for this problem.

Garmin: 1:31:13 http://connect.garmin.com/activity/366331198
Official: 1:31:12
Last year CDA: 1:38:49

T1  
I got out of water quickly, I was running to the wetsuit stripper and they were amazing! Saw Mandy and Elly, thanks for the cheering and volunteering, I got too excited and ran pass my T1 bag, probably lost some time there. Went in the tent, stayed calm (my memory from last year was ‘war zone’ and ‘panic’). It was busy, packed; I just keep moving forward and found a chair. Tried to stay relaxed and do my own stuff. Out of the tent and went to the rack, and my bike is lonely there, it was the ONLY BIKE at the rack! Depressing…Oh well… Not a great transition, but it’s ok.
I decided not to put on my heart rate monitor strap, I knew that I won’t be looking at HR during the race, and it would be too much work (time) to put it on in T1, so I decided not to use it.
Note: Practice transition! Don’t sit, there’s no need to sit. And practice to use your watch. At one point I looked at my watch and I thought I stopped it but it wasn’t, so I was wasting time worrying about the watch instead of the race. Again, practice everything for transition.

Garmin: 5:53 (probably I paused it for a bit) http://connect.garmin.com/activity/366331201
Official: 6:14
Last year CDA: 8:15

Bike
With last year’s experience, and also everything I read and heard about the bike course, or just ironman bike leg in general, I was going to be patient and held back most of the bike if not all of the bike leg so that I can run afterwards. My strategy was to find a comfortable pace, then just stick to it, or even switch to one lower gear. However, when it came with all the spectator, flats, down hills, it was tempting to go faster.
I brought two bottles of carbo-pro (8 scopes) + 2 nuun, one more bottle at specialty bag. Eating jelly bean and honey stinger waffles throughout the course, have no issue at all. Saw Mabel and Moses’ family heading back to Whistler; it is always great to have that!
Everything was working well until mile ~90, that’s when I rode back from Permerton to Whistler, got hit with the heat and the wall! ALL my legs muscle started to cramp up, I had the dilemma because I was having so much pain that I couldn’t pedal any harder (I was at my lowest gear for the last ~20 miles), at the same time I couldn’t stop moving neither, I basically had to find my ‘sweet spot’ so that cramping/pain is kept at its minimal, at the same time I could keep moving forward. GPS data shows that my speed basically average ~20mph for the first 90 miles then it drop to like 10mph. At one point I rode 35 minutes for 5 miles!!! (painful! Mostly mental and disappointed) And I had to stop twice with so much pain, with the intention to stretch my muscle but getting stuck with the bike standing by the side of the road because my quads and hamstrings were all cramping at the same time, so I just couldn’t bend my legs and stuck for a while. I drank lots of water, carbo-pro with nuun, salt pills, aleve, nothing seemed to work, and I pretty much had to deal with that for the rest of the race.
Tough bike course to say the least, could’ve been better, but it is what it is and I kept moving forward.
Note: started having minor cramps at mile 10. Still a mystery why this is happening, I only have had this 3 times, once during CDA last year, second time during Victoria HIM this year, and this was the third time. I think a high intensity swim before the bike is causing it. Never happen in training.
Should find out what is causing it.

Garmin: 6:31:07 http://connect.garmin.com/activity/366331202
Official: 6:31:13
Last year CDA: 6:51:43

T2
Got off the bike, limping through transition. T2 was uneventful. There was a lot of space when I got there. Everything went smoothly as expected.
Note: again, practice transition. Don’t need to sit just because there are chairs lying around. I should just keep moving.

Run
Right out of transition I was taking in all the energy from all the cheering, people were yelling “go Bruce!”, “Good job Bruce!”, I started to look around thinking maybe Mable, cycle U people, or friends are there, then I kept on hearing people cheering for me but I don’t see anybody!?!? Then I realized that my name was on the bib, lol… silly me.

Run was painful to start. I had to walk a lot so that I could keep moving; I made agreement with myself that I can only walk for a certain ratio, like .05 miles, then run for the rest of each mile. My cramping/pain would build up when I run, and I was basically finding my redline and tried to find that sweet spot where I could keep moving/running without stopping. Basically do that for the rest of the race but then the ratio kept getting bigger. I knew that stopping wasn’t an option, and I was consistently monitoring my watch to check my progress. I had a goal to finish before sun set, but my mistake was, I didn’t check what time is sun set! Haha..
I kept moving forward and used all the cheering as my energy that pushed me forward. Heading back to village and I asked one of the volunteers how far am I? he said 500 meter!!!! So I picked my pace way up and after couple turns I realized that he lied to me! Haha… but it’s all good, that helped me quite a bit at that moment. 
I love the final stretch which is down hill, and the set up let many people to cheer. Love the finish, love the energy and there’s still day light!

Garmin: 5:09:33 http://connect.garmin.com/activity/366331213
Official: 5:09:29
Last year CDA: 5:41:49

I wonder if the crazy cramping didn’t happen, or wasn’t as bad, how would I do. I am happy with my time, great venue, great energy, great course. Did better across the board in all legs, I am happy with my race.

2013 Whistler 13:23:40
2012 CDA 15:09:56

Marathon Training day #2

Off, cross-train (XT), or easy run of 30 to 45 minutes.

today will be the rest/easy day, as of now, I think I am going to run the 30 to 45 minutes, will see.
Run last night was good, felt good, feet were kinna sore first thing this morning, but that wasn't a surprise.

Day #1

Update 23:39
Success!
Although I stayed at work late, went home late, ate late and played diablo late, I still managed to run at 24 hour fitness.
Per the plan, today is 5 x 800, with warm up and cool down. The interval went well, it wasn't easy, but its not suppose to be easy, and also my recovery were probably longer than suggested, oh well, it's a start, I consider a good start!

Success #2, no Ben n Jerry tonight!

I'm proud of myself


I am so efficient in gaining weigh, I can gain weigh so fast that it's unbelievable.

After ironman at the end of June, and a a month of racing in July, i think I started being lazy and gaining weigh at the end of July. As of last night, 9/17/2012, I was 192.x lbs, and 18.6 body fat %. (was about 185 in the 'summer', just 2 months ago)

Anyway, i need to change that, and I am going to train for the Seattle marathon which happens in 10 weeks, and today is training day #1! I am going to follow this training plan from runners' world <http://www.runnersworld.com/charts/hallchart.html>

 today is warm up, 5X800, cool down. doesn't sound too bad.

hopefully it goes smoothly, wish me luck!

Ironman ink

Once again, again and again, I'm gonna start by saying that I haven't written anything for a while!

Anyway, I did it, ironman coeur d'alene 2012 in idalo, was it hard? Heck yeah!! It was long, hard and painful. And was it worth all the pain? Absolutely!

So one of the reasons I wanted to do the ironman is to get the tattoo, and finally, yes finally I got it! I was debating if I want to get it plain or design, red or black, sizes, and all the other good stuff, so I was thinking. I know, you think that I usually don't think right?!

Then after ironman, I was racing for the whole month of july, before heading to Europe for Olympics and vacation, that means more procrastination on the tattoo!

Finally I'm back, and I still didn't do it, yet!

And finally, I got it, last Sunday. It's even a spontaneous decision, too. I bet I would've pushed it off even more if it didn't happen that day.

There you go, plain, red with black outline, normal sized IM logo on the back of my right calf.

Now what's next?