Posted this on Dailymile and FB, but thought I’d put it up here too…
16F at the start, but my gear selection was pretty good and I wasn’t too cold and quickly warmed up to a nice temp. I love my buff! Used it as balaclava to start and then just covered the ears after the 1st couple miles.
I had hoped to break 9:00 pace but this is a very technical course. About 5 miles is on a tight mountain bike single track, and it’s really hard to get any speed there. (See the Garmin link below to see what I mean about the 2nd half of the course!)
Considering this was my 1st running race over 7 miles in several years, I am pleased as I was strong throughout even though I was pushing hard. (I have done adventure races that have had longer foot sections, and orienteering courses where I have been “running” longer times, but this was my 1st running race this long…)
The garmin data is here.
Here is a screen shot from the google earth import:
And here is my heart rate… This shows I really could not have gone a whole lot faster. Â I was in the 165-175 range and that 175 is definitely pushing anaerobic. Â I have not done a max heart rate test in a while, but I would think it is only 178 or so. Â So the fact that I was above 165 for so long is a sign my vo2 max is doing pretty good.
2sparrows 
178 must be a typo, because I don’t think anybody can stay that close to max for 90 minutes.
I need to do a max heart rate test, but I have not seen my HR over 175 in a few years. Based on 220 – age, which I know is not very accurate, I would be 181. A few years back 220-age was way off for me — always showing a max HR too high, but now it seems closer.
I’ve always had a high LT and been able to go high for a long period… However I agree, looking at the numbers, 98% of max for that long would be impressive. 🙂 But even at a max of 185 I was at 95% of max.
I have thought of doing one of those human perf tests. There’s a college about 30 minutes from here that I should try.
At first I missed the fact that this was a race and not a normal workout, so the higher effort makes much more sense to me now. 🙂
And looking at the graph more closely, you did have quite a bit of variation. While you were peaking near 175, it looks like your average is probably quite a bit lower, so yes, I guess I do believe your max could be near 178.
I wish I could post HR vs. elevation, as that seems to be the biggest correlation in this race. My average HR was 167 according to garmin… That still puts average at 94% of max for the race. I think that is within possible, and I am happy if I was able to hold that. 🙂
Sean,
Great run and report. Thanks for reading and commenting on mine as well. I hope you will consider running the Philosopher’s Way Run on May 10 — http://www.trailheads.org/pwtr/.
Cheers, Monk
We’ll see about Philosopher’s Way… The web page shows it as May 8th, not the 10th, and the 8th is my anniversary! 🙂
One more thing, I thought about wearing my HR monitor but I didin’t want to be distracted by one more thing during the race. I was disciplining myself that the only readout on the Garmin I would look at was the race clock. Sometimes I get distracted by too many other fields. I still could have worn and just not looked at those fields during the race. Next time I will wear it.
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