So this weekend, my wife and I are getting away for about 36 hours or so to spend the night up in Maine and then run a relay race together on Sunday morning. The distance is half-marathon combined, 6.55 or so miles down on a river rail trail in Augusta and 6.55 or so back to the start/finish line again.
I found this elevation map of the trail through Runkeeper, and we are using it to try to determine our strategy for how to approach the race. Since as a relay team, we effectively will be splitting this in half, it looks like the first half of the race (mostly downhill) is easier overall than the second half which is mostly up hill. So our immediate plan is to have my wife start off the first half of the race since I run hills much more often than she does, I likely won't suffer as much on the back half... One problem is, I despise Runkeeper's Elevation maps now. They don't seem very useful other than giving a rough idea of what the course is like. The elevation maps are over-exaggerated and don't give me the numbers to know if those steep climbs are 10ft or 200 ft.... So I took the map in Runkeeper and plotted out my own in Garmin Connect as best as I could believe I figured out the course.. and I got this:
So this shows the same basic idea where the majority of the first half seems down hill and then uphill in reverse. The peaks smooth out a bit, and the entire elevation goes for about a 20-30 ft change which really is nothing I don't think. So I don't view this as a huge problem at all. The only steep incline there is where the race leaves the rail trail for a brief bit to a street, and that jump might simply be Garmin Connect's inability to understand the change of topology there. I'm going to assume the entrance to a rail trail is not quite that steep.. So we're going with the game plan of having her start the race, and I'll finish it.
Next, now that it is close enough to race time, we can get some initial hourly weather forecasts for Augusta (even though weather channel seems wrong half the time)..
Initially the weather was looking a few degrees warmer with about the same 80-85% humidity, but now there is a small (30%) chance of rain, that I guess they are calling for enough cloud cover to keep the temperature in the high 60s for the race. Personally, with temps near the 70s and high humidity, I hope it does rain. Running in the rain is refreshing, keeps you cooled off and lets me run better since my body does not have to work as hard keeping myself cool. Even if it doesn't rain, the temperature isn't as high as it was on the last race earlier this month, but still not necessarily ideal enough where I am thinking that I'll set a new personal record here.
My wife does not necessarily enjoy running in the rain too much, but she also doesn't enjoy the heat.. so I don't really know which she will prefer. To help her keep from blowing herself up in the race trying too hard, I've been keeping it low key and telling her that we're just doing it to have fun. Which is really the truth, we know that we won't be a winner here, as there are teams that have run this in under 1 1/2 hours in the past. My best guess is that my wife and I are looking closer to 2:15 to 2:30 for our finish time. I do want her to feel like she did well or improved though since that is always a motivation boost, but for her keeping it low key so she enjoys herself is the best path to get to that goal.
For myself, I don't expect to beat my 10k time from last weekend. This trail is about the same difficulty as what I ran before, but the weather is not quite as good and I have to go a hair further. As long as it is raining, or the weather doesn't get too hot, I think I can still do this 6.55 or so miles in under an hour. My goal this time out is to do a better job of pacing myself than I have the last two 10k race/challenge scenarios. I want to start out and run pretty much a 9:10 pace for the first several miles. It looks like the first 3 miles for me will be a bit more of an uphill than my last 3 miles. Without knowing the course that well, my goal is to run fairly even 9:10 pace those first 3 miles and then see about speeding it up the last 3 just a hair (9:05 range - 9:00 range). Then whatever I have left the last .5 I'll just see what I can do.
I've gotten good at pacing for 5k races through experience.. but still a challenge for me on the 10k side as a fairly new race distance for myself.