Race Post-Mortem: St. Patrick's Day 10K

Giving it all I got during the last 0.2 miles of the race.  Thanks Pacers for the free race photos!

Sunday, March 6, 2016
Washington, DC
Difficulty score: 2/10 (0 for weather, 2 for course profile, 0 for altitude)

Initially, I had planned on running the Colonial Williamsburg Half-Marathon the week before the St. Patrick's Day 10K as my tune-up race for the Shamrock Marathon, but I decided against it due to some ankle and calf soreness I had been dealing with for the preceding week.  I usually prefer half-marathons as tune-up races for marathons since they are the perfect blend of being long enough to have good predictive strength for my performance in my upcoming race, but short enough that I could recover from them relatively quickly.  A 10K race, on the other hand, is quite different.  But this was the only alternative to the Colonial Williamsburg Half-Marathon, and I wanted to get a tune-up race in as well as another race toward the DC Front Runners Race Circuit.

I figured that if I finished this 10K at around 38:30 to 38:59, that would bode well for my abilities to run a sub-3:05:00 in Shamrock.  Plus, that would translate to an age-graded score of between 69 and 70, which would mean 69 to 70 points toward my Race Circuit total in accordance with DC Front Runners Race Circuit rules (not a particularly high score for me, but it is quite difficult to get high scores with a 10K race given the rules).  But regardless, I definitely wanted to do better than the last 10K I ran; I decided to run the Veteran's Day 10K last November without my Garmin, and I ended up pacing for a 10-miler rather than a 10K, coming in at 39:27, only four seconds per mile faster than my pace for the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler.

The St. Patrick's Day 10K course overlaps with that of several races I have done, including the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler and the Navy-Air Force Half-Marathon.  It starts right in front of the Washington Monument on 15th Street.  Runners then turn right and run down Independence Avenue and Rock Creek Parkway for a few miles before turning around and heading back toward the monuments along Ohio Drive.  But right before we return to the starting point on 15th Street, we veer away along Independence Avenue again for a two-mile out-and-back segment.  After a left turn back down 15th Street, we enjoy a downhill finish.  So this course is somewhat fast, with just a few rather long, gradual uphill segments.  I would say the difficulty rating is actually more like 1.5 than 2.

Map of the course from the Pacers website.

Training

My training had been a little lax during the winter compared to my training for Hartford and for Chicago.  I didn't even write down my training plan for this cycle like I usually do.  My mileage was quite a bit lower; most of my mileage since the end of December was in the high forties and fifties, with 58 miles as my maximum.  But I did take my tempo runs at a faster pace; whereas before, they were mostly between 6:30 to 6:35/mile pace, I took them mostly around 6:20-6:30/mile pace this time around.

The structure of my training was very similar to my training for Hartford and Chicago:

• Monday: OFF
• Tuesday: tempo runs.  These would typically consist of a one-mile warm-up, followed by four miles at 6:18 to 6:30/mile pace and then a one-mile cool-down.  Later in the cycle, I started extending the length of the tempo portion to five and then six miles.
• Wednesday: 4-5 miles at recovery pace (around 9:00/mile).
• Thursday: tempo runs similar to the Tuesday night ones earlier in the cycle, but later, these transformed into mid-week mini-long runs of 8-10 miles at my typical long run pace.
• Friday: 4-6 miles at recovery pace (around 9:00/mile).
• Saturday: 6-8 miles easy (7:42 to 8:24/mile pace).
• Sunday: long runs of between 12 and 21 miles (7:42 to 8:24/mile pace), although some were used as progressions where I accelerated toward target marathon pace (7:00 to 7:05/mile pace) in the later miles.

My mileage for a few of the weeks were very low; I had one 35-mile week during the huge snowstorm that hit Washington DC in late January, and I had a 30-mile week in February when I tweaked my Achilles tendon.  But other than that, I was able to complete most of my training, even with the Achilles tendon soreness.

Race Day

On race morning, we had temperatures were in the low forties and cloud cover and some humidity; I felt it during the race in the later miles.  This was perfect racing weather, or at least it was to runners; on the way down to the start line at the Washington Monument, my Uber driver told me he felt cold looking at me dressed in shorts and about to race in a sleeveless T-shirt (he actually told me he was wearing sweatpants underneath his trousers and had on three sweaters underneath his jacket, and even then, he had the heat cranked up high).  I hoped for similar weather in Virginia Beach on the twentieth.

I arrived just as the 5K runners were starting.  As soon as they were off, I did a one-mile warm-up and then checked my jacket at bag check.  After running into some of the other members of DC Front Runners about to do the 10K, I found a clear and relatively flat area to do some dynamic drills near the final stretch leading down to the finish line.  As I was doing my lunges and Frankenstein walks, I got to see some of the Front Runners doing the 5K finish, including Eric (who got a 5K PR), Blake, Lennie, and Socrates.

I was a little antisocial prior to the race and ended up lining up in the starting corral relatively early; for some reason, I was just anxious to get this race started.  As I waited for the start of the 10K, I thought about my plan for the race.  I wanted to target around a 6:15 to 6:20/mile pace for the first three or four miles, and then pick up the pace if I had it in me.  With that strategy, I would have finished somewhere between 38:30 and 38:59.  I would have loved to get below 38:20, which would have given me an age-graded score of above 70, and therefore 70 points toward the DC Front Runners Race Circuit.  But I certainly wanted to do better than my 39:27 in the Veteran's Day 10K back in November.

Miles 1 and 2 (6:17, 6:15): For the first half mile or so, my Garmin kept indicating I was going between 6:04 to 6:07/mile pace; I kept trying to hold back because I was sure I probably was not capable of holding that pace the entire way.  Strangely, my effort during that segment of the race felt easy; perhaps it was because of the gradual downhill that made up the first half mile or it was because the signal in my Garmin was acting a little weird.  But after about 0.6 miles, when my pace started to climb closer to 6:20/mile, I started to put in a bit of a harder effort level and settled right behind a guy in a turtle costume (green tights, green beanie, and a green T-shirt with a shell pattern on the back).

Turtle and I joined this group of two other guys and a girl and we ran as a pack for a little while.  I felt this effort level was appropriate; I was working, but I felt like I could sustain this for the remainder of the race.  After another half-mile, I started to run next to Turtle, and then in front of him.  As we approached the turnaround near the Kennedy Center, I dropped Turtle and the rest of that pack and started moving forward to catch up to the next group of runners ahead.

Miles 3 and 4 (6:11, 6:14): I continued to feel a bit of a spring in my step as I headed back toward the monuments down Ohio Drive.  This portion, which goes along Ohio Drive and around the Tidal Basin, is straight and flat, which allowed me to pick up the pace slightly.  I spent most of these miles trying to catch up to the next group ahead.  I was unable to find a pack that I could run with for any length of time; whenever I would catch one group, I would end up dropping it and moving ahead.

Gradually picking off people in the middle miles of the race.  Another free race photo courtesy of Pacers.

Also, when I passed the 5K mark, I had a minor freak-out when I looked at my Garmin and noticed that it read 27 minutes.  But then I remembered that included the one-mile warm-up I had done prior to the race; I did not reset my Garmin before starting.  I could not remember exactly how much time it took for me to run my warm-up mile, but I do remember it was less than eight minutes.  Doing the math, that meant 19 minutes and change for the first half; if I maintained this pace until the end, I could finish between 38:30 and 38:59.

Mile 5 to the end (6:10, 6:03, 1:32 for the last 0.27 miles): I ran by myself for the last leg of the race down Independence Avenue and back toward the Washington Monument.  My typical late-race impatience kicked in, which caused me to gradually accelerate.  I really didn't have much to say about these miles; I continued focusing on catching the next person ahead of me and dropping them, and I managed to do that to a number of people.

When I approached that last hill leading back up to 15th Street, I reminded myself not to charge up that hill and to save some for the fast downhill finish.  I kept even effort up that hill, passing more people and not really slowing down too much.  When I finally crested that hill, I gave it everything I got, particularly when I got closer to the finish line and noticed the time on the clock reading under 38:30.  Dan was there on the side near the finish cheering on the 10K runners, but all I could manage in response was a glance and a feeble wave; I was focused on getting to the finish as quickly as possible.

38:40 (6:14/mile pace) was my official time.  That was about 30 seconds slower than my PR two years ago, but I'm still satisfied with this time; it was certainly much better than the Veteran's Day 10K four months ago.  A 38:40 translates to 69.31 age-grade points for me; this will not be my highest score during this Race Circuit year, but at least I got pretty close to 70 points.  Particularly with the 2015 updates to the Age Grade Scoring, it seems to be getting much harder to get a high score on a 10K.

Also, I ended up covering 6.27 miles during this race.  I'm not sure how that happened; I used to be so good at running tangents (my "shortest" half-marathon in terms of actual distance covered was 13.12 miles and my "shortest" marathon was 26.23 miles).  Perhaps if I actually covered closer to 10K in distance, my age grade score for this race could have broken 70.

Next Steps

A 38:40 would have indicated that a 3:04:59 in the marathon isn't completely out of the question.  I have never used a 10K race as a tune-up for a marathon, so I am still trying to figure out exactly how to translate a 10K time into a reasonable target marathon time based on mileage, experience level, and other factors.  But 3:04:59 divided by 38:40 is about 4.78; based on previous 10K races that I have run several weeks after a marathon and my findings playing around with the Maclin Calculator, I expected my marathon to 10K time ratio to be about 4.75 and 4.8.

However, as of Monday, March 14, 2016, I have decided to transfer from the Shamrock Marathon to the Shamrock Half-Marathon.  The Achilles tendon, although better than it was that week after I tweaked it, is still sometimes sore during runs, although I find that the soreness is pretty much nonexistent during the faster runs.  I decided to err on the side of caution this time.  Before I transferred, I had this feeling of dread about the marathon, like something was going to go very wrong if I ran it.  This was not just pre-race jitters; it was some sort of instinct.  But after I transferred, these feelings disappeared.

Besides, I already have a BQ-4:17.  The biggest predictor of the cutoff for Boston 2017, namely the number of qualifiers in Boston 2016, is still yet to be determined, but based on information about qualifying rates in the larger feeder races so far, I have no reason to believe that I will have problems getting in.  Perhaps I might even get a half-marathon PR in Shamrock.