Registered for BMO Vancouver Half Marathon 2013

Registration for the half marathon is complete.  Registration cost goes up to $109 after tonight (from $79 right now) so if you are thinking of doing this one, sign up now!

Hotel and flight booking is still in limbo.  Last year we booked through Expedia and stayed at the Georgian Court, right downtown.  I'll keep an eye on Expedia's sales and try to get the best price again this year.

Fast Alex Training Hard to Defend His Title

Training Update: A Bad Month, A Good Week, A Bad Week...

I still haven't really gotten going on training to beat Alex yet.  Whenever I try to ramp it up my hip ends up bothering me again and I ease off.  Hopefully over Christmas holidays I can get on track, plus I have a new advantage, new Saucony Shoes!  I ran today so presumably from here on out it will be all catching up and then running faster than Alex.

New Running Shoes!  Saucony ProGrid Guide 4

Jaime Platz YMCA Tri Club

I saw this at the Y this evening when I went for my workout:

YMCA Tri Club

Details

We saw the tri club working out a lot when we were working out last year, and saw their big race as well.  The race is all indoors, the swim in the pool, then the bike in the spin room, and the run just outside the Y.  Not needing to buy any equipment and having organized workouts makes this a great way to get into triathlon, they always seemed to be having a lot of fun...

Other People's Ironman Arizona Race Reports!

In the tradition of my previous accumulations of race reports, here and here, these are great race reports from IMAZ 2012!

• Thomas Gerlach
• Coady
• Matt Russell
• Wed With The Fishes (pretty cool blog name) Swim, Bike, Run & Finish
• Kimberly Schwabenbauer
• Charisa Wernick
• Year of Alison Swim, Bike, Run
• Molly
• Vince (has good pics)
• Cook Train Eat Race
• Shannon Coates
• This Spartan Will Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 (this is a mega race report)
• Base Training (this is another mega race report)
• Derek Garcia
• Haley Chura
• Ironmancona
• SWTrigal
• Rian Bogle
• Quadrathon
• Todd Mellinger
• Dan Billingsley
• Dave Tallo
• Dreaming Big
• Eric from Hardy Breed
• Marek Jasolka
• Waylon Christensen
• Travis McKenzie
• Multisport Dad
• Iron Tatum

Training Update - A Poor Start

In the last two weeks since the Fall Classic 10 Miler I've gotten off to a bit of a poor start running.  First, I took 3 days off after the race, ran on the Thursday, then didn't run again until the Sunday (6.5 miles).  After this run my hip was sore so I took it easy again the next week, only running 3 times.  Next week, I will definitely pick it up...

Race to Beat Alex Training Overview

Beating Alex in the Spring Half Marathon

Fast Alex

My goal for the winter is simple, get fast enough to beat Alex in the spring half marathon!  This could be the BMO Vancouver Marathon if we end up doing it, or maybe something around Edmonton like the Police Man's half.

The Background Story

Pace Times for Vancouver, Edmonton Half Marathons and the Fall Classic 10 Miler for 2011/12

Alex is basically the running champ of our half marathon crew.  Of those we run with regularly KK is the only one who can get close to his half marathon times and he is still around 3 minutes ahead of her.  As you can see from the graph above, Alex's times are consistently lower, and slowly but steadily improving to boot.  Rich's times are quite a bit higher but as of late are dropping fairly quickly, he has definitely seen some major improvements this year.  My usual training trend is to train fairly consistently and vigorously in the spring for the Vancouver marathon, lay off a little for the Edmonton, then train harder for the Fall Classic to try to make up for the disappointing Edmonton time.  The closest I've ever gotten to Alex's time was the Vancouver half this year, where I was 10 minutes slower.  Losing that 10 minutes (and maybe more if Alex picks up his game and follows the trend) is going to require more than the usual training plan/pattern.  Which is why I have...

The New Plan

First, I am going to ramp up my mileage.  I first read Hadd's Approach to Distance Running on Chuckie V's blog, and it sounded like a good theory.  Basically, it suggested I needed to run quite a bit more at easy heart rates to push up my lactic threshold and learn to run fast at a low heart rate.  To that end, I am going to try to ramp my training up from 20 miles this week to 50 miles a week by Christmas (an increase of 10% a week). I'm going to try to run most of it at an easy pace, with some faster runs to add a little speed.  Then, in the new year I'm going to switch to Hal Higdon's advanced program.  I've done the intermediate program a couple of times and it is always pretty solid, but hopefully the advanced program will help me take it to another level.  This plan features 6 days or running a week with hill running AND speed work, how can it fail?

29th Annual Edmonton Fall Classic is in the Bag

Yesterday was the Fall Classic.  The weather was nice and the course was beautiful, and I ran an OK race.  I took 1:35 (1:28 last year), 9:32 pace (8:49), and was 142nd out of 239 (109/261).

Nothing has really changed from my review last year, so I'll just link that here instead of going into too many details.

After the Race

The Start Line