Category: Race Report

post race analysis

Running thru January & February 2017

Posted on by Anthony

If I had to pick a favorite Winter month, it would be January. For most, represents an opportunity to start the year on a clean slate. For me, this month is used to reflect on my past accomplishments and setbacks from 2016; take a step back and re-align myself with my short-term and long-term goals. One of those goals is to race my first Boston Marathon on April 17 – so short term, there WILL be lots of running!!!

Here are some pictures to start!

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Jan 7, 2017 – NYRR Joe Kleinerman 10K

Location: Central Park, NYC

Weather: 23 degrees F, 46% humidity, 9mph wind – Light Snow into heavy snow

Before heading out to a work trip on the first weekend of January, my friend Henry convinced me to race the NYRR Joe Kleinerman 10K in Central Park. After racing it last year and setting a 10-kilometer personal best of 35:27, I knew that contesting for a personal best would be a stretch. So instead, I utilized the race as a workout – I ran the first 5km as a threshold effort, then 2 miles at goal marathon pace, followed by a 1.2 mile hard effort to the finish.

Total finish time of 36:32, 5:53 avg. per mile.

First Pacing Event of the Year! 

Jan 22, 2017 – NYRR Fred Lebow Manhattan Half

Location: Central Park, NYC

Weather: 43 Degrees, 100% Humidity, Wind W 3 mph, Fog/Mist

Pacing the 1:30 group meant that my goal time was 1:29:30 (30 seconds under). The new course featured 2 ½ counter-clockwise loops of Central Park. For my fellow New Yorkers, that meant 3x’s up Cat Hill and 2x’s up Harlem Hill…a challenging course with all within the park. And to make things a bit more interesting, there was a nice blanket of fog that made conditions, well, moist! Nonetheless, I was set out to hit even splits given the undulating course. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred 

Total finish time of 1:29:22, 6:49 avg. per mile.


Fast forward to SuperBowl Sunday and seeing that Christina has neither raced in Central Park nor a 4-mile race, it was fitting that we both registered for the NYRR Gridiron 4M.

Feb 5, 2017 – NYRR Gridiron 4M

Location: Central Park, NYC

Weather: 34 degrees, humidity 52%, wind 9 mph

It was another chilly February morning so Christina and I stayed bundled up until we finished our warmup jog and pre-race rituals. We lined up in the A corral with about 5 minutes before the start and wiggled our way towards the middle. Huddle for warmth, right? At 9am, we were on our way – counterclockwise around the park just like the Manhattan Half (minus the Harlem Hill). I let Christina do the pacing so my goal was to stay beside her. We hit the first mile a few clicks under 7 minutes, where we did the most weaving through the slower runners. For the most part, we held a very constant pace, faded just slightly on Cat Hill and then booked it to the finish! And with that, a new personal best for Christina. (We’ll be racing the RnR DC half marathon in March, too!)

Feb 19, 2017 – PPTC Cherry Tree 10M

Location: Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY

It was a beautiful Sunday morning in NYC; unseasonably warm for mid February! Coupled with fine weather and a relatively late race start (10am) meant that I was able to sleep in, grab my racing flats and head over to Prospect Park in no hurry. Once I arrived at registration, I bumped into a fellow CPTC teammate, Nobu. We decided to warm up together and catch up.

Having never raced a standalone 10 miler and coming off of a 60 mile run training week, this race would serve as a long threshold workout. Right from the start of the race, I settled into 5:50 per mile pace and found myself racing alone. Nobu and a handful of guys were up ahead but their pace would not have been sustainable for me. So for nearly 95% of the 3-loops of Prospect Park, I ran completely alone. Instead of worrying about my pace, I focused on my breathing and leg turnover…especially during the climb towards Grand Army Plaza. The first lap of the race was my fastest and my 2nd and 3rd laps were nearly identical, guiding me across the finish line in 58:18, 5:50 avg. per mile, and good for 7th place overall.

And just like that, two months of the year are already behind us.

I’ve logged over 500 running miles as of writing this post and The 121st Running of the Boston Marathon is just around the corner.

Run fitness is finally starting to take shape and I’ll have more updates soon!

Thanks for reading – my next update will be posted after rockin’ Rock ‘n’ Roll D.C. half marathon on March 11th, 2017.


IRONMAN Cozumel Race Report [November 27, 2016]

Posted on by Anthony

My first time in Mexico was surely a memorable one! I will post a non-race report post later on, but for now, I want to get the race report out of the way. 

Travel:

Getting to the race was very simple – I flew on Thanksgiving morning from NYC, took a little break in Miami where I met up with Jill, a fellow Team Chocolate Milk teammate. By 1-o-clock in the afternoon, we had landed in Cozumel and was on our way to the resort. After a quick bite, Jill, Tom and I went and picked up our bikes from TriBikeTransport over at Chankanaab (swim exit/ Transition 1). Because our hotel was hosting an American style Thanksgiving buffet, we stayed put and did not go in Centro Cozumel (downtown) until race check in.

teaming up with Tom to pump up Jill’s tires
first night in Cozumel, Thanksgiving
pre-race selfie w/ TCM teammate Jill

Swim: The swim course is a point to point 2.4-mile swim from the Marina Fontaur and exits at Chankanaab dolphin aquarium. Jill and I lined up in the 60 minute to 70 minute corral. Our plan was to swim together for as long as possible. We ended up swimming about 20 minutes together before the cross currents split us apart. Apparently, the swim currents had changed depending on which line you took – if you were closer to shore, it was ‘slower’, whereas if you swam further out away from shore, the current was more predictable. Hindsight is 20/20 and if I had the opportunity to do this again, I would have swam as far from shore. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the swim despite a very slow 1:17:07 split, nearly 6 minutes slower than my 1:11 swim at IRONMAN Kona just 6 weeks prior.

I exited the water in 36th place in my age group, giving myself plenty of work to do if I wanted to content for a podium spot.

Realizing how slow I swam…

Bike: One thing that I learned from Kona was that I needed better nutrition management in the heat. 6 weeks ago, I had depleted my sodium and potassium levels on the bike and I was not going to have a repeat here in Cozumel. So this time around, I decided to do a full change into cycling bibs and my ZOOT Kona cycling top. Having a cycling top gave me the sense of security that I would have all my nutrition for the ride – until I can find a better way to store and allocate my nutrition, I will take the time penalty from changing into cycling gear.

There really isn’t much to the bike course. It was 3 counterclockwise loops of the island. The west side of the island was a slight tailwind throughout the ride and the entirety of the east side of the island are all cross-winds. And yes, the winds became more intense with each loop of the island. 

The plan was to stay in aero position as much as I can, with occasional back stretches. It was important to stay tucked in and low, especially on the windy eastern portion of the island. My ride had a Normalized Power of 201 watts, my first time holding over 200 watts for the IRONMAN 112-mile ride. 

Being that the course was actually 113-miles long, I rolled into transition just over 5 hours at 5:01:35. This relatively strong ride dug me out of my 36th position after the swim and put me into 5th in my age group (which I later found out from Maggie out on the run course). 

5 hours of this position

Run:  I sure wasn’t going to run the 26.2-mile marathon in my cycling shorts and jersey, so I did another full change into my favorite running gear – my New Balance 3-inch split shorts and Team Chocolate Milk singlet. I also wore 2XU compression socks, which I found much more comfortable than not wearing any compression. 

After 5 hours on the bike and the sun beating down on my back and head, I felt very hot once I hit the pavement. My legs felt like bricks for the first few miles. In fact, I couldn’t find a ‘comfortable’ run stride until the first turnaround at mile 4. Did I mention that the run course is also 3 out-and-back loops? Essentially, each out and back was 7km out and 7km back. 

To take my mind off the fact that I had to run 3 identical loops, I decided to break down the 42.2km marathon into 4 repeats of 10km and one repeat of 2.2km. The 10km splits were 50:27, 53:17, 55:52 and 56:45, follwoed by 10:28 for the final 2.2km. Total marathon run time: 3:46:47

Finish Time: 10:16:40, 84th overall, 4th in Men’s 25-29

IRONMAN World Championship Race Report [October 8, 2016]

Posted on by Anthony

2016-10-08-06-22-07

A total of 11 days have passed since racing the IRONMAN World Championships in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii and I’m finally ready to reflect how my race-day unfolded.

This was my second time to the island and I really wanted to do much better than my 2014 result. But more importantly, I was looking to have a strong performance – something that I have been building up to for almost a year. Unfortunately, just a couple days before the race, I came down with a fever and chills that lasted nearly 24 hours. I knew something was wrong when the water in Dig Me beach felt cold…not even the delicious coffee from the coffee boat helped warm me up. This sudden turn of events left me with one option – to rest as much as I can and to head into race day knowing that I will try my best.

And so I did just that. It wasn’t pretty but in the end, I got myself to the finish line in 10 hours and 47 minutes.

Swim – 1:11:34

If you have been following my progression throughout the year, you might already know that my weakest part of a triathlon is the swim. With half ironman swims ranging from 34 minutes to 39 minutes this season, I had predicted that I would swim close to 1:16 in Kona. So imagine the surprise when I exited the water nearly 5 minutes under my expected goal! I drafted off the swimmers in front of me for the majority of the swim and exited the water feeling good; pumped that I had taken 11 minutes off my 2014 Kona swim. I took my time in transition to put on sunscreen before heading off to grab my bike.

Bike – 5:19:06 (21.06 mph avg)

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Anything can happen on the Kona bike course. The first two hours were fine; power was a little lower than expected and I was passing lots of faster swimmers along the way. It wasn’t until about 50 miles into the ride that I realized that the nutrition was not going down (or staying down) so I made the switch to try and take in more liquid nutrition at the subsequent aid stations. The approach to Hawi and the climb to the turnaround was met with a cross-wind coming over the right shoulder so I sat up during the climb to gain some more power.

I hit the turnaround, ditched my bottles and grabbed two new ones before the descent. Things were heating up and my nutrition plan had been compromised, either by the heat or the residual effects of my fever earlier in the week (or a combination of both).

Nonetheless, I hammered away as best as I could, knowing that I can still overcome a bad day by playing it smart. After descending from Hawi, I made sure that I would fuel up at each aid station since none of the solid foods were going down. At one of the last aid stations, I saw a volunteer hold up a bottle of Coke and I couldn’t resist. Coke never tasted so good after four and a half hours of drinking orange flavored Gatorade and water. With about 15 miles left, it was all headwind, a pretty steady one that forced me to stay tucked into aero-position in an effort to minimize drag.

I rolled into T2 feeling very hot, a little overcooked and ready to tackle the marathon run.

Marathon – 4:06:13

The original plan for the run was to negative split it by running the first half very easy. That plan went out the door at the very first aid station on the run when I felt light-headed and out of energy. My stomach was not having it today and I tried to nibble on some pretzels and bananas. At that point, I was hoping that this feeling would pass and that I would feel better. I decided to run between aid stations and walk through aid stations to grab enough water and nutrition.

Around mile 4, a guy ran up to me and told me to run with him. He introduced himself as Craig, wearing a Team Timex kit. We ran together for a couple of miles before he had to stop to take care of nature’s calling. But before we split up, he reassured me that “We will get to the finish line”. I used his words to motivate me at times when I wanted to just quit.

After walking up Palani Road towards Mile 11, lots of clouds rolled in providing some relief from the sun and heat. By this point of the marathon, some pretty nasty blisters had formed in under the balls of my feet. To remedy it, I took off my socks – which worked briefly but the pain from the blisters came back every time I ran longer than a couple of minutes.

There wasn’t much I could do to get rid of the blister pain and there was no medical tent along the Queen K. Along the highway, I saw some familiar faces…first Hugh and then Talbot, both of whom where not racing and were out cheering and taking photos.

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photo credit: Hugh W.

After passing the point where spectators were not allowed on the Queen K, I made my best effort to not stop running until the aid stations. I hit the energy lab and grabbed an entire can of Red Bull, chugged it and maintained a slow but steady shuffle. For the first time during the marathon, I did not stop to walk at an aid station. Exiting the energy lab meant I had about an hour left on the run (at my current pace). The blisters were killing my feet and I tried to focus on the runners ahead of me to take my mind off the pain. Eventually, I got to Palani Road and it was all downhill to the finishing line.

With all I had left, I ran as fast as I could down Alii Drive and across the finish.

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celebrating with Kristin on her 4th place Age group!

Ironman Kona was yet another humbling experience that heavily tested my mental ability to keep going forward when all seems to go wrong. I certainly did not materialize my training on race day, but was able to dig deep mentally and not give up. 

Thank you to my family and friends that helped make this endeavor possible.

Thank you…

  • CEEPO Bikes, Marc-Andre, Gilles, Steve, and Joe for the bike support. The CEEPO Viper held up to those crazy crosswinds!
  • Team Chocolate Milk for the post-race recovery
  • ISM Seat, Brickwell Cycling, Headsweats, Honey Stinger and Rudy Project

The next blog post will include more about Kona, some more take-aways, and what is up next.

Thanks for reading! 

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