Chris Yates ran the Veterans Voyage KC 5k and finished this distance in the time of 23:38.
Fastest splits since recovering from kidney donation. 1st place in age group (there were only two of us 😁). Goal was 23:59. I’ve never ran this course before and it was a super hilly. Steep inclines and declines. I wasn’t sure if I had enough to get my goal since the last 800m was 75 feet of gain. Glad I surpassed my time and I feel like I got more gains to make.
Steven Youngkin ran the Loop the Lake 25K and finished with a time of 2:37:56. This was a personal record by 1:30:25.
The race was chilly (33 degree actual temperature with a wind chill of 28 degrees) and it consisted of 10 loops around the lake. The course was mostly flat and on roads so made for easy running. Modified my intervals to 2.5 minutes/30 second run/walks. Was able to sustain the intervals the entire time and ran the final mile. Felt sore afterwards but know that I will recover by tomorrow.
The pace of 10:11/mile was actually faster than the half marathon I did just 6 days ago so I ran faster on shorter distance which made me feel good. Final rankings were 28/53 overall and 3/3 in my age group. For my age group, the paces they were running at (7’43″” and 8’13″”) were way beyond what I could hope for in a long distance race so I’m more than happy with 3rd.
Malvin Smith ran a 10k race and completed this distance in the time of 42:51.
A fun event. Night time run around Rutland water with head torches. A little cold and breezy but a steady performance. Overall feeling good with more to come.
Xhenet Aliu ran the Richmond Marathon with a finishing time of 3:27:36, which was a PR!
First marathon in the books. I started training this summer with a goal of a 3:45 finish time, then revised to 3:40 (BQ time for my age group), then secretly revised down over the past month because training had been going so well. I ran with the 3:35 pace group for 10 miles, then broke away for the second ten miles, but really tried to pay attention to my paces, which is NOT something I was good at with the training. As I was warned, the last 10k was where it got tough. I never hit the wall, but I did have to dig deep for those last five miles. That said, those last five miles were my fastest and the splits before that were almost perfect negative splits, which I am SO grateful to pacers for. I’m extremely happy with my time and the chafing was worth it. Also super grateful for this training plan, which pushed me harder than I thought I could go.
Knut Ostby ran the Virtual Half Marathon and finished with a time of 2:04:34.
When I tried my virtual half goal race 18 September, I could not finish. So this training run, on 14 November, was my first opportunity for a replacement. Of course my training had not been as regular so I could not hope to reach my 2 hour goal from 18 September. But I still felt this was OK; and I felt accomplishment by at least finally doing a 21.1K at a challenging pace. I was happy to have a running companion along the way, which helped a lot to keep the pace. Also happy that the I could keep up and slightly improve the pace in the middle of the run, and in particular happy to keep the pace in an uphill portion at 7-9K. The last 2K at a slightly increased pace was hard though.
Kent Beachy ran the Richmond Marathon and finished in a time of 4:40:22.
Get to the start line at about 7:00 for a 7:45 start. I’ve got 7 gels and 800ml of LMNT. I’m assigned to corral 3, but line up in corral 4 to start out with the 4:15 pace group for the first few miles to keep me from starting out too fast. I run with them for about a mile and a half, but it seems really slow. So I decide to settle into what I think is my race pace. I settle into 9:00-9:15 miles until mile 7. Feeling pretty good about this as I was aiming for a 4:10ish finish. Mile 7 has a big big downhill chunk and I let it go a bit and run it in 8:32. I was actually ok with that. My10k split was 57:52.
Aid stations were every 2 miles until mile 20, then every mile. My fueling strategy was to alternate between water and Nuun at every aid station. Around mile 12, I was getting the squish. So from that point on, I was taking the LMNT that I brought. Anyway, still feeling good. My half split was 2:00:41. A little fast. I knew I couldn’t negative split at this point, but really felt 4:10 was in the books and maybe even a little faster.
Somewhere at the end of mile 16, beginning of mile 17, we turn into the wind. Mile 19 is where the trouble starts. I start getting spasms/cramps in my left calf. Keep plugging along. 20 mile split is 3:09:02. Not bad doing the mental math, 10 minute miles puts me a 4:11. However, my calf has other ideas. Some where in mile 21, I start getting a sharp pain in my left knee. I start a run/walk here. I think that the calf issue has been affecting my gait and the knee isn’t liking it. Finally, I succumb to walking the last three miles. I get disappointed when the 4:15 pace group passed me earlier, but now the 4:30 pace group passes me 🤬. I crossed the finish line at 4:40:22. It took me 91:20 to finish the last 10k. Pretty disappointed.
I’m not happy with my performance, but I did finish my first marathon. I was determined to finish. I didn’t DNF. I am a marathoner now.
Kumar Thiagarajan ran the Richmond Marathon and finished this race event in the time of 3:32:43. This was a new personal record by 6 minutes!
No cramping for the first time in 8 marathons. My previous PR was 3:38. I was targeting 3:30. But just couldn’t finish strong. I couldn’t sleep until 2 am the previous night. Considering that I could get only 3 hours of sleep, I think I did pretty good.
Dominika Ul ran the Dartmoor 50 Granite (50 mile), finishing this distance in the time of 14:20:00.
Felt great for a first half (I was 4th female), then suddenly my right knee got super sore and I was struggling even to walk. But magically managed to walk it off and finished jogging. Energy level pretty high till very end. Well fueled. Came up to 85km and 2300m vert.
Meagan Kemp ran the Navy 10 Miler and finished in a time of 2:09:58.
First ever more than a 5k.
Pamela Etheridge ran the Aquidneck 10K and completed this distance in the time of 56:01.
Beautiful course along the waterfront and through the Norman Bird Sanctuary in Middletown, RI (near Newport). The road was pretty slanted in spots and the final mile loop was WINDY, but overall the course was flat and fast. I did struggle a bit at the 5-mile mark but was able to kick it in the last .25 miles to finish strong. The goal today was to do about a 9-minute mile…9:01 was the final tally so came pretty close!
Courtney Mcclurkin ran the Cowtown Half Marathon with a finishing time of 2:15:40.
I got into the 2:15’s, so I cut about 3 minutes off my last half marathon time!
Kumar Rao ran the Deavuille Marathon and finished with a time of 3:59:27, which was a PR by 30 seconds!
Had set the goal time of 3:39, which was probably too aggressive considering my previous PR was 3:59:30 in Boston 2019. But 3:39 appeared to be feasible based on some of the training runs, such as the 34 km progressive fast finish with 28 km at 5:13, and the 2 x 6 miler at 4:56. My mistake was that these workouts were before I got sick with Dengue and lost about 2 weeks of training. After my recovery, it was just 2 more weeks of training before the start of the 3 week taper. So setting an aggressive goal, despite some doubts expressed by the coaches, probably had already set me up for not having my best race.
This race which starts and ends in the small Normandy town of Deauville is called the “”Marathon Internationa de Deauville””, with a 2 x 21 km loop passing through some smaller towns and long stretches of narrow country roads. I had assumed that the distance would be quite close to 42.2 km as the roads were narrow, but the total distance turned out to be 42.76 km.
So official race chip time was 3:59:27 and Gun time was 4:00:06. Time and distance recorded by my watch were 3:59:30 and 42.76 km. I cropped the distance at the end to 42.25 km and found that my actual marathon time was 3:57:42 (elapsed, moving time was 3:55:49). I reported 3:57:42 for the Abbott World Major Virtual Marathon.
Won the age/gender group at Deauville among 9 and was 781/1660 overall. Rank 4th in the Abbott WM Marathon (Gene Dykes is first, as usual, with a 3:20:42 finish!)
Coach @Andie had warned me tangentially that 3:39 may be too aggressive, particularly coming back from illness, and had reiterated the need to start at a very easy pace. I basically followed the plan she had proposed till 15 km. The plan had called for increasing the pace to the GMP of 5:10 between km 15 to 25, which I could not achieve. My ability to run at pace just fell apart after km 15. I mostly ran with the 4:45 pacing group from start till km 20, after which I lost them at a stop to tighten my shorts. The pace for the first 20 km was 5:15 and the remaining race, 5:51.
What went well in the race was that I enjoyed it throughout; never really felt very hard, except on some of the hills during the second half; there were no aches/niggles throughout and there were no cramps; the Alphafly’s worked well, although I had some difficulty on sharp turns when I was running slow at the end; was able to maintain form and stay erect. Also, ran continuously, except at some water stops and to fix some gear malfunction. What did not go so well was just not sticking to the hydration and fuelling plan I had meticulously worked out. Should have written it down to be reminded of it or set clock alarms.
The course was nice, running past the important landmarks of Deauville, which is a small town, passing through the country side with lots of autumn colors. There was good crowd support in the towns. The weather was great and the race started at 9:30, which gave plenty of time in the morning to get ready.
