Sunday, April 29, 2007

Police Half Marathon

Athletes who are running Police Half Marathon:

Dan Barker
James Schneider
Jennifer Walker
Ryan Murray
Mike Chui

Race reports are now posted by these guys under the comments.

Results are found here:

http://www.resultscanada.com/results2007/2007_CalgaryPoliceHalf/2007_CalgaryPoliceHalf_OverallHalf.txt

4 comments:

Chewy said...

Short version:

I achieved both of my goals: to beat my time last year and have a good long tempo run.

Long version:

Stupid me! I crashed at the speed-theory racing-clinic yesterday and got all banged up. I totaly under-estimated the effect it has on my body.

My goal time was sub-1:40 and 1:38 was my target. So, 10K went by famously (about 46 minutes now). Then, it just hit me. My right hip area, where i had the road-rash, just got really sore and really starting to bother me. I can feel it every step i take and I felt like a leaky tire. All my energy and motivation just learking out of me with every step I take.

For the next 10K, the only thing running through my head was "Chewy, just keep moving" and I just zone out everything else around me.

I think my finish time was 1:42:30 which is still "faster" than last year's time with the 100m reduction. And, i did have a good long tempo training workout. As a race, it would be up on the top of my worst races list, probably a tie with last year's Police Half.

Lesson learned?! I need to smarter with race preparation. Oh well, I'll be back next year.

Anonymous said...

Here we go...

At 1km I hit 3:30 and thought, maybe I can hold this pace, but then I realized that's a 35 min 10km and I had another 20km to go. At 4 km, Carson Bannon began the trash talk and kept pulling on my shirt. All in good fun I might add. I responded and told him he has never run a 10 km at this pace and he'll never make it. I also told him he was slow. You see, Carson doesn't care about the end result. He only cares about the experience, which is something we may want to look into as he ran a 1hr24min half today- with no more than 2 training runs a week and a ride yesterday. He claims Safeway Lumderjack sandwiches and Deep Dish pizza gives him special powers.

Okay so, at 10km I'm at 37min13sec - a personal 10 km best by a couple of seconds (Mother's Day run, here I come!). I decide to just go with it. At 11-12 km, I get a stich, so I switch my breathing, let out some gas and I'm back in shape after a km or two.

All this time Frank W. has been toying with me, so I've been focusing on him from the beginning. I pass Frank on Crowchild Trail and we play cat and mouse for the next two km. The last kilometer was a sprint to the finish and I crossed the finish line in 1hr20min13sec.

It's 7 p.m. and I still feel like my body has been through a meet grinder. In summary, it was good and it sets me up for a great running season. I'm pretty happy.

Anonymous said...

James here...

So, Dan and I looked at this race as more of a training run as we had just done a 90 km ride the day before. We targetted a 1:45 overall time and started off slowly. Now, this was the first time Dan has run this race so I had to keep him reigned in. He was in the mode to run but I kept reminding him that we still had some major hills coming up. At the 10 km mark we were at 48 minutes so we were on pace to do our goal time.

Dan was fast on the downhills as he sprinted down them whereas I was more conservative and plodded down them. Eventually, I'd catch up to Dan on each flat segment and we'd plod along. At 18 km, we were at the top of Crowchild and I told Dan we should start speeding up. We were going pretty fast and passed a number of people. At the last km, both of us were breathing pretty heavy and I could feel my legs tiring real fast. Dan sprinted off on the last 100 m and finished ahead of me by 10 seconds or so. All in all, we did the race in 1:41 so a good acheivement after our monster windy ride the day before. Onto the Banff Calgary relay next weekend.

Anonymous said...

Not feeling as pumped up or as ready for this race this year as I did last year, I wasn't too sure what to expect of myself on this day. Running a half under 2 hours is still an accomplishment for me, so I would be happy with anything under 2, and anything under last year's time of 1:59:xx would be a bonus. I decided to try to run a 5:30/km pace and see how I felt. At 10km, I was at 55 minutes exact and feeling pretty good. The toughest part of the race for me, both physically and mentally, was quite early, between 11.5 and 12.5km. Not sure if my body was wondering why I was still running or something...I have only raced 10km's since my last half marathon last summer. Thankfully, I found a second wind that helped to bring me up the dreaded Weaselhead hill without too many problems. Started to target people to pass, and had to push hard up Crowchild and the overpasses. The hills, although not huge, kept feeling bigger. My last km was horrible, and one of my slowest splits, as I was having some serious gut issues. Not very fun in a race. I managed to finish in 1:56:13, just over 3 minutes faster than last year. I am slowly chipping away the minutes, and although a lot of people think I should be a faster runner, I have to remember that I've come a long way from my first half 2 years ago in 2:14. But I do know there's a lot in me still...just need to mentally figure out how to physically get there.

Jennifer