Double Blind

(Update: 2008 Vancouver Sun Run Training schedule is discussed on this post, or directly here)

One of my New Year’s resolutions (there were 12 of varying complexity) was to complete the Vancouver Sun Run in a respectable period of time. For those that don’t know, the Vancouver Sun Run is a 10 kilometer run that has evolved to be the second largest 10km run in North America.

There were a few reasons for this particular new year’s resolution. One was that I needed to shake myself up and do something completely different – breaking up a routine is important for personal development. Also, training for a race requires some medium-term planning, and my strategic planning processes inside my head need some practice, so this was as much mental as physical. Physically I don’t do a lot of exercise in the wintertime, so coincidentally it will better prepare me for the summer hiking season. One of the hikes I have planned in the summer is fairly aggressive and completion of this hike is also another of my New Year’s resolutions.

I set a target of being in the 25th percentile for my age group (25 to 29). You can see the 2005 race results right here. In the male 25-29 age group, out of the 2658 people registered, 2071 actually managed to finish AND stick the timing chip in their shoes correctly. So out of the 2071 people that actually finished, you have the 50th percentile finisher ranked 1035. This person finished in 58 minutes and 20 seconds. The 75th percentile runner (ranked 518) did it in 50 minutes and 51 seconds. The 25th percentile runner (ranked 1553) did the race in 70 minutes and 27 seconds.

I do quite a bit of hiking in the summer (when the weather is warm), so I’m not completely out of shape, but running (outside of the running you do when playing other sports) is something I have never done. As a result, I have set myself a reasonable target of being better than the 25th percentile runner, or running better than 70 minutes and 27 seconds for this coming Sun Run.

In preparing for this, I have been following the Learn to Run 10k program and have now completed six weeks (of a 13 week program). I can comment that running initially was difficult, mainly that I was over-exerting myself too much in the running phase (heart rate was too high), but after the second week things really started to settle down and the running became much more doable. There hasn’t been too much in terms of physical ailments – usually I can classify the training sessions as being “cardio short” (where you don’t seem to get enough breath while running) or “legs short” (your legs/calves really start getting sore during the running).

I have observed with the weather here being as rainy and cold as it is, it does indeed make running a little more difficult. Although I prefer cold weather because my body generates a lot of excess heat, I did notice when I did my training in southern California and Arizona a week ago (where the weather, suffice to say, is much warmer than it is here in Vancouver) it was much easier to run, although I end up drenched in my own sweat after.

I’ve traced my running on Google Earth and preliminary estimates after week 6 show that I can probably do the Sun Run in about 68 minutes if I had to do it today without further training. This is making an extrapolation based off of a run-walk cycle and it also makes a conservative estimate on how fast my running speed would decay in the last 2.5 kilometers of the race (as I have never run/walked for the full 10km in a training session). My intention is to run for most of the race, so hopefully I can get my projected time down to 60 to 64 minutes. A real ideal result would be a time better than 60 minutes, which would mean I can run 10 kilometers an hour for an hour, double the typical walking speed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2006 and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.