Tag: races

Two Castles

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The Two Castles 10k went…. Ok.

Two Castles is a 10k run between Warwick Castle and Kenilworth Castle. It’s a nice idea with two main disadvantages: 1. Kenilworth is about 40m higher than Warwick so it’s really the wrong way around, and 2. There’s not a lot of shade on the roads between them.

As is becoming tradition, it was a race day so the weather was really hot. There were a few familiar faces from parkrun there so we were standing around before hand, chatting in the grounds of Warwick Castle. Castles tend to have quite wide courtyard areas and relatively short walls, which means they aren’t very shady. I could feel my exposed skin getting baked even at 8:30 in the morning. The past few runs have been unusually warm for the time of year, but I think we’re now in official heat wave territory. I have to credit the organisers with handling it well, though. Compared to the Solihull half marathon, which I ran last August during a heatwave, there were more water stations and a lot more marshalls around.

Unlike on some previous races, my death-wish tolerance was quite low this time so I took it pretty steady and ran just under 48 minutes. Last weekend I did a 13k at 4:30/km, this one was 10k at 4:45/km. So that’s quite a bit slower. I decided that if I raced it, I might hit 45 minutes (which I wouldn’t even be happy with for a race effort anyway) and I’d feel grim for the next day or two. So I kept it at more of a mid tempo effort and felt all the better for it. It was actually very congested anyway, not helped by the weather causing people to slow down all the way along the course and walk up hills, so even at a more sedate pace I was having to weave around people the whole way, which meant I was expending a bit more energy than I should have been for the pace.

I think I made the right choice. One of my Strava enemies rivals friends who finished less than a minute behind me on the 13km last weekend ran it in 45:30 but said she felt sick the whole way. Been there, done that, this way was much better.

The hills weren’t too bad. Maybe I’m just getting better at them. A lot of people walking them whereas to me they felt alright. It was quite an undulating route with a lot of gradual climbing. Anything steep was pretty short lived.

Warwick Castle. Sorry about the lighting.
He didn’t run it with us

So anyway, let’s talk about ground contact time balance. This was the worst one yet, with 54.7% of my ground contact time on the right foot. 54.7% maybe doesn’t sound that bad looking at percentage points, but in terms of actual percentage difference it means I spent 20% more time on my right foot than my left, and that’s a lot!

I don’t want to read too much into one reading though. I’m using the Garmin Running Dynamics Pod, which clips onto the back of my shorts. I suspect that if it’s not perfectly centred it’ll bias it one way or the other, so it’s more something you have to look at in terms of trends rather than single data points. Regardless, it fits with my suspicion that I tend to rely on my right leg for power a lot more, which is going to show up on faster runs and hills.

In doing a few easy runs since, I’ve found that my left hip flexor is tight (well I knew that already) and I tend to move nearer to 50% if I really focus on pushing against that tightness through my stride. Yesterday I did a run that that was roughly 50-50 for the first few kilometres, which I think is because I did some squats and hip hikes to warm up. There’s lots to work on.

13

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I went for the 8 mile race instead of the 3 after all. I think it’s officially 8.2 miles. My watch got it as 13km. The conditions were warm and sunny, similar to the last few races. You don’t expect to have so much sun in England, but maybe that’s climate change for you.

I struggled with the sun in the last two races so I was a bit apprehensive. The route was on country roads which were heavily shaded in places and totally open in others. We started at 10:30 so some of the shade gradually reduced as the sun moved overhead. I was quite aggressive in trying to minimise my sun exposure on the course, even if it was just running right next to a hedge that gave my legs a bit of cover. I also carried my own bottle of water because these tiny charity runs tend to provide water in cups which are very difficult to drink from while moving.

And it went like this…

Oh what’s that? Is that even pacing? Yes, it went exactly to plan. I decided to go out at a 4:30/km pace (22:30 5k, 45:00 10k – nice round numbers), and I actually stuck to the plan and kept it solid the whole way.

I had the fun experience of gradually overtaking all the people who hadn’t paced it as well, which I was on the other side of last time!

The end result was that I felt great when I finished, with no hint of dehydration. It was a huge win for sensible pacing and a confidence boost in general after a string of races where I’ve struggled. I think the water helped too.

It’s not all good though. My right knee is feeling a bit niggly. Since this run, I now have a Garmin Running Dynamics Pod which gives me some more stats on my running form. I’ve used it twice so far and on both runs I spent a lot more time on my right leg than my left leg and the difference gets bigger on hills and trail paths (and hilly trails, well that’s even worse). That’s interesting to know and is probably my problem. Unfortunately it can’t tell me why, or how to balance it. You could take the view that the left leg is weaker and my body is compensating. You could also take the view that the left leg is working optimally and the right leg is slow (after all, a short ground contact time is good).

I need to figure this out on my own, but I think it’ll involve a lot of single leg plyometrics.

I have a 10k this weekend, which is the last race in the near future (thankfully!). I’ll be interested to see what my L/R balance is like on a sustained race effort.

10k!

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The 10k went much better than the half marathon two weeks ago. The weather was similar, with bright sunshine and about 18 degrees C. According to Garmin the course had about 60m of elevation. This raised my eyebrow because 60m over 10k is about the same as 30m over my local 5k Parkrun, which I regard as not flat but certainly not very hilly either, whereas the 10k felt pretty hilly. This led me down a rabbit hole of reading about how elevation data is calculated. The simple answer is that it’s calculated according to elevation mapping datasets, but these are noisy and imperfect. Then, small differences are smoothed out by a curve smoothing algorithm to try to account for the noise. If you change the smoothing parameters, my run gives a total elevation climb of anywhere between 32m and 180m. So in summary: garbage in, garbage out. Let’s just say that it was a two lap course with two climbs on each lap.

My time was 43:05 which got me 26th place out of just over 300. It’s towards the slower end of a 10k for me but it was hilly and hot. Two people passed me around the 7th-8th km and that was entirely on me for going out too fast and not being able to hold the pace (I only held as well as I did because I was trying to keep up with one of them). This is frustrating because my pacing over about 5k is usually either perfectly even or slightly negative (faster on the second half) but apparently pacing longer distances is still a mystery to me. Though the heat doesn’t help.

And as for the heat…. well, I didn’t die or feel unwell, but I definitely felt the sun. I think the forecast temperature is largely irrelevant compared to whether or not it’s clear sun, which is really what cooks both you and the road. I prepared better this time by wearing a very light running vest and drinking half a bottle of water 15-20 minutes before. But I think I actually got more dehydrated on this 10k than I did on the half marathon two weeks before. My ears blocked up right after I finished, which is something I’ve only experienced one other time from running, but it was also during a hot race and I think it’s a dehydration thing. There was water on the course but it was in little paper cups rather than bottles, so you couldn’t take it with you while running. I grabbed one cup, managed to get about half a mouthful into my mouth and then poured the rest over my head. I’d have fared a lot better with bottles because I’d have got more water into me and I could have kept pouring it over me for longer. Today I feel a bit headachy and probably worse than I did after the half.

My achilles tendon was fine until about 7km (on a hill) then gave me a 1/10 ache for the rest of the run. I’m trying to remember how this has developed. It’s a small ache in the mid-portion (i.e. slightly above the heel), which is supposedly easier to rehab than the insertional variant (i.e. right down at the bottom of the heel). I’ve been having tightness in my calves on and off for a few weeks so it all blurs together, but I think I didn’t feel anything in the actual tendon until last Monday. And I think that I’ve probably overstretched it in trying to sort out my calves. At the moment I can’t really stretch them at all without it starting to ache. So I think with a few easy days and no stretching (and definitely no hills this week), it should start recovering. I don’t feel like running today anyway…

Next on the calendar is another 10k in three weeks. But in two weeks there is a 3 mile/8 mile race very locally which I did last year. If it wasn’t for the achilles tendon I’d be signed up to the 8. I’ll see how it is by the end of the week, the 3 miles should be OK…

Birmingham

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Or, did I finally lift the half marathon curse? Spoiler alert: no I didn’t.

In the end, what actually got me was the weather. Again. The forecast was about 12 degrees, cloudy and maybe a bit of drizzle. Most of my training this year has been done in cold, wet and windy weather, so, apart from being a few degrees warmer, these conditions would have been fine. Unfortunately, though, the cloud had to meet other engagements so we actually had pure sunshine at the time of the year when the sun is is starting to project some real power. Apparently it was the warmest day of the year so far, and I got sunburnt. (And less than a week later, I was walking up to Parkrun thinking “hmm, I wish I’d put my gloves on”)

I ran pretty well for about 10km then started to feel a bit dubious. By about 12km I started feeling very nauseous and thought I was going to throw up (I didn’t), and had to stop and walk a couple of times. The 25m climb over the 12th kilometre possibly didn’t help. As of the 16km water station I kept hold of the bottle and kept pouring it over my head to cool me down. It helped a lot and towards the end I was keeping a steady pace again, but my heart rate was very high.

The course was very up and down for the first half, then, after a real climb up to about 12km, settled into a steady downhill. So in theory the second half and especially the last third should have been much faster, but everyone I follow on Strava (with one exception) had splits similar to mine, with a total drop off from around 12km that never recovered. I’m not sure if that was the fatigue from the hills in the first half or the the cumulative effects of the heat (I suspect the latter). The one exception ran fairly even splits, and then collapsed at the end and ended up in the medical tent afterwards (he’s fine now).

I had underestimated the hills. In previous years the course was much flatter, but they changed it this year and hadn’t published a profile. The first 7km went in circles up and down some fairly steep hills in the city centre. Runalyze has the total elevation gain at 211m, which makes it the hilliest half I’ve done. It has almost the same amount of total elevation gain as the Boston marathon (over half the distance), which is considered a difficult marathon because of the hills. I’m not really a big fan of hills.

Anyway, the summary is that I wasn’t pleased with the result at the time (1:47), but it was a tough course on a hot day and I still managed to hold a decent pace over the last few kilometres, so that’s a win. Usually when I struggle, I look at the race photos afterwards and my posture has collapsed, but this time I still look pretty strong by the end, so that’s a positive too.

I have to mention the goody bag. Post run goody bags are usually underwhelming, but Great Run outdid themselves here. It included some hummus “crisps”, a the token unappetising protein bar and… a bottle of vitamin C tablets. Not a multivitamin, but vitamin C specifically. Because… runners are prone to scurvy? 🤷‍♂️ I do like the Great Run t-shirts though. They always seem very high quality. This year’s is quite thin, so I now have a wide selection of light summer and thicker winter running t-shirts from Great Run.

Recovery was fine and I was running again a couple of days later. I actually did too much in the week afterwards and this week I’ve been quite achy and have had to tone it back a bit. My right hip and left achilles are a little bit grumpy. I’ll probably skip Parkrun tomorrow and save my legs for a 10k I’m doing on Sunday, which hopefully will go better than the half. The forecast is sunny and hot, but I’m prepared with a new very light summer running top. I’d like to say the course will be easier, but it’s two laps with a 600m long 2.8% gradient hill on each lap… hmm. At least it’s only 10k.