OR ?

August 11th must be a popular date in Utah because two events we want to do up there occur on the same day. First is the Provo River Half Marathon that I ran last year and Ann has been training to run with me this year. Then there is the ULCER bike century of 111 miles, which I have not done before but would like to. Ann and I now both registered for both events and are leaning toward doing the bike event on our new tandem. The only issue is that I have been getting Ann ready to run the half marathon and not quite as focused on biking, but I feel she can do either one. I have not trained to run the half marathon at any fast speed because I have been more focused on biking and figure I was going to just run at Ann’s pace which I can do without as much speed workouts as I did last year.

We might just wait to see what the weather is and how we feel. If it is going to rain that day I would vote to switch to the half marathon. I would rather run in the rain for 2 hours than bike in the rain for over 6 hours.

Categories: Century Rides, Running Races
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Ann and I met John in the lobby of the hotel at 5 am to drive to the start of the race. I don’t recall a 10K that started so early, but this one started at 6 am so we had to leave around 5. Actually we could have left a bit later because it was only about 15 minute drive. Ann and I did a little jogging around to warm up, as did John. My plan for this race was to run with Ann and try to pace here. I am not in that good of running shape since I have been mostly focussed on cycling.

Soon after 6 am they started the race. We all had timing chips on our shoes so I was not too worried about moving up to the front of the field but some slower runners did that which forced us to try to weave our way around them the first couple of miles.

It is a downhill race as you can see from the following heart rate graph (this was my heart rate).

We had a very good pace for the first three miles due to the eleveation drop, with the 2nd mile at a 8:15 pace, which may have been too fast for Ann who normally runs this race distance closer to a 9:00 minute pace. But she held on very well and we finished the race with a final time of 56:13, which was good enough for Ann to place 8th in her age group. John finished with another sub 40 minute 10K, so he did very well. We all thought the last two miles were hard becasue they were flat or maybe a bit uphill, which seemd hard after running down for the first three.

Categories: Running Races
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