YUKON CHALLENGE RACE REPORT

The challenge of running back-to-back races of (essentially) the same distance is trying to evaluate them objectively. I’d love to say that after 7 weeks of building my mileage and doing 1-2 workouts per week that I crushed the pace I ran during my Thanksgiving 8K. However, Saturday’s 5-mile race was run at 7:18 pace or :06 per mile slower.

NOTE: I’m now one of those runners that uses what their watch tells them as gospel. There was a time when if I ran a race, I’d believe that the events were their advertised distance. But I now take the opposite approach and assume they’re just approximations. For example, after the 8K my watch said 4.89 miles, even though 8K = 4.97 miles. After running the 5-mile race my watch said 5.07 miles. Not that my watch is correct, but at least it was the same in both races. If I assume the courses were the correct length, then my 8K pace would’ve been overstated and my 5-mile pace would’ve been understated.

But let’s forget about the watch – for now. I’m happy with how I raced on Saturday. This was a fairly tough out-and-back course that started at the Guthrie and followed the River Road south before turning around. That means the first mile was downhill and most of the second mile was flat before climbing to the turn around point and repeating those hills in the opposite direction. Temps were just under 20 degrees and there was a slight first half headwind.

Another change I’ve adopted – in addition to believing my watch to be the gospel – is to just run by feel once the gun goes off. There was a time when I’d take my splits at every mile and then spend the next minute or two analyzing them and projecting my finish time. Now I try to stay more present and monitor things like my breathing, my pace, and how relaxed I am. Mentally, I like it a lot better, but if you have a specific goal in mind, you have no idea if you’re on pace or not. You don’t get that immediate feedback at the mile marks. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Perhaps you’d run the same exact time either way. I don’t know, I’ve never tested it.

Anyway, I said I’m happy with how I raced and that’s because I stayed engaged during the whole race. I was constantly monitoring the things I could control. It was a pretty small race with less than 300 people. I think after about 1.5 miles I was in the same place that I finished. I ran back and forth with one guy for a few miles. After being about 10-15 feet behind him at 3 miles I caught up to him in the next half mile. I think that woke him up a little as he pulled away and put 25 seconds on me the rest of the way. Of course, he ended up winning my age group and I was 2^nd.  

Back to the watch. I’m currently using a COROS Pace 2, along with their app. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of data being tracked – things like running performance as a percentage, Load Impact, Fatigue, Base Fitness, etc. I’m still trying to get a feel for all of it. I constantly click on the little question marks that provide more information trying to understand what an “optimized” fatigue level off 44 means or an “excellent” Running Performance of 112%. Can I really trust when my watch says I’m above the recommended Load Impact range of 594-1081?

Getting back to using my watch to compare my 8K and 5-mile races. Here are a few of the key metrics that stood out to me.

Metric                               8K          5M

Avg Effort Pace                7:06       7:03

Running Performance    119%     112%

Training Load                   171        160

Elevation Gain                 164        266

 

Overall, the race served its purpose. It proved that Thanksgiving wasn’t a fluke and that I’m still on the right path and motivated to work towards my 2023 goals.

RECAP OF WEEK 1/8 – 1/14

Sunday – Day off

Monday – AM: Strength, PM: 4 miles easy

Tuesday – 16K skate ski

Wednesday – 6-mile fartlek (1/2/3/2/1/2/3/2/1:00 “on” w/ 1:00 “off”) 1:00 run at 5K, 2:00 run at 10K and 3:00 run at HMP

Thursday – AM: Strength, PM: 5 miles easy

Friday – 5-mile run w/ strides

Saturday – 8 miles total, including 5-mile race

Summary: 28 miles of running, 0 miles of biking, 16K of skiing and 2 strength training

 

Quote of the day;

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” – Unknown