Sunday, June 5, 2011

Beethoven's 8th..er 8km!


The Town Crier reads the Proclamation to begin the 16th Annual running of
The Beat Beethoven 8km race in downtown Kingston.



 The Kingston Symphony waits to begin playing the 50 min. selection of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" in the free outdoor concert!

512 racers stand ready for the music to begin playing and the race to commence.
My Arch-nemesis Stacey with me behind at 2km
Why is everyone chasing me?!?;-)

Chip time- 36:56 which was a PR by 11 seconds
Thank goodness Stacey was running strong today because she kept me running hard the entire distance and helped me run a PR and win 2nd in my age(which was a 10 year age group) so I was happy with both of those accomplishments today. I ran a very even race pace wise and at approx. the same pace as I ran my 5km a few weeks ago so it is nice to see that my training is taking hold and my fitness is building. Hitting the 5km mark was tough for me as mentally I was done however the old legs still had some gas in them and carried me to the finish line despite what the rest of me wanted to do.
Note: I believe my first official race ever was The 2005 Beat Beethoven 8km where I placed 480th out of  543 runners in a time of 51:52(I didn't beat Beethoven). Today I was 69th out of 512 and almost exactly 15 minutes faster;-)

PS- lest I forget to mention I wore a HR monitor for the first time in a race today. I wore it on my long run with Tammie last weekend and for the 16km my hr jumped between 140bpm and 160 due in part to the many hills on the course with an average of 150bpm for the run. In my one interval workout of the week I was running in the mid 170's bpm for my repeats and topped out at 181 which was pretty much the same for my race with an average of 175ish and a max of 182 although I think my true max might be a bit higher but I will have to wait and see about that. Here is a link to the data my Garmin collected from the race including HR, pace etc. Kinda cool to see.

4 comments:

Lakewood said...

congrats on a new PR AND 2nd place finish! woo hoo! Pretty cool to know you went from 480th to 69th.

The heart rate monitor has definitely been a big help for me. I'm sort of a techno-geek, so I love being able to keep statistics on how my heart rate evolves and changes per races or training run.

anyway....congrats again!

-j

Sara Montgomery said...

Congrats, EJ. Great race!

David said...

That is so excellent!! Way to stay strong. Congratulations on the placement.
It was a two sip read though ;)

Eliza Ralph-Murphy said...

Thanks for the congrats everyone. Knowing that I had people pulling for me who also put themselves through this same sort of trial really helped me in the middle of the race.

John, I wish I put the HRmoniter on sooner. I have had it for over a year as it came with my Garmin Forerunner 305. Lots of fun data can be had from that little gadget.

Hey Sara;-)

David, I think 2 sips is just about right for an 8km with 1/2 a cup for a 50 and a full cup for a 100. Besides I just put my foot in my mouth when I start analyzing my races so this time I let the pictures and my data do my talking for me.