Sun Run 2008 results
Posted in Commentary on April 20th, 2008 by Sacha PeterMy stopwatch had me clocked at 56 minutes and 9 seconds (Update: looking at the Vancouver Sun newspaper Monday it says 56 minutes and 5 seconds), which is considerably better than my last year’s time. I hope the chip registered my start and finish times correctly. I almost shaved off an entire minute. This was a full two minutes below my expected time and quite frankly, I don’t expect to achieve this type of performance again since mostly everything went correct.
I was enrolled in the green category (50 to 58 minute expected race time) and when I arrived at around 9:25am there were already a thousand people in front of me at the designated starting point. It was cold outside, but not too cold – it was almost the perfect temperature.
Eventually at around 9:45am I crossed the start line and went along my way. The course was actually fuller than it was over the previous two years, despite my green bib – I had registered in the green category assuming that I wouldn’t have to compete with too many other people for space, but this turned out to be a completely incorrect assumption – there were plenty of white bibs (59 minute to 1:09) and even some people with strollers that were clogging up the roads.
I finished the first kilometer (which was mainly downhill) in about 5 minutes. My 4th kilometer time was about 22 minutes which put me on track for a 55 minute finish. There were a few moments where people on the left hand side were walking and preventing people from running from getting through, which was annoying to no end. At the 5th kilometer, the time was roughly 27:30, and I walked up the hill to the Burrard Street bridge, but at this point my feet weren’t too good, but the worst of it had passed. Upon reaching the top of the bridge, I pretty much ran the rest of the way, only taking two very short 10 second walks.
When approaching the Cambie street bridge, I was already flying by other people (taking advantage of the slight downhill on this stretch) and realized that I could easily break my previous year’s time, so I went for it and just sprinted up the bridge deck, and down to the finish line. I noticed at the finish line that people were stopping just at the electronic timing mechanism since it was taking quite some time for the people to snip off the chips from the shoes.
In terms of energy, I was doing fine throughout the entire race, although I felt around the 3-4km mark that my body was clearly searching for the batteries, but they came back after the Burrard Street bridge. My feet actually started to get “numb” on the bridge (a huge sign that I have shin splints), but oddly enough this made it easier to run, and run a lot faster.
So this was almost a picture-perfect run, with minimal disruptions. I also think a good decision was to avoid the water breaks completely.
I’ll be back next year, but I won’t have a clue how to beat this year’s time. I’ll need to figure out a good way to run faster without burning myself out.
(Update: Declan posted his time – he improved from 58:22 to 46:45!!! Holy cow! Somebody help him with his secondary objective…)
Tags: sun run
Hey there–I commented in your Sun Run post last year and wanted to check in again because I enjoy readign your commentary on it. Congratulations on beating your time.
Last year I was in the purple zone with a 71 minute time; this year I moved up to white and my Garmin has me at about 57:30. I’m pretty pleased with that. Although I’m pretty sure I could have done it in 55 or better if there weren’t 59,000 other people to contend with.
I also couldn’t get over the number of people walking at the extreme left, in groups! And on that Hornby hill–I trained to run hills, and I want to run them, not walk just because everybody else has decided to and there’s no way to pass them!
I think it’s great that so many people are keen to participate, but it’s frustrating that so many seem to underestimate or outright lie about their finishing time. I couldn’t believe how many green bibs I saw casually walking.
See you next year!
Congrats on the improvement – and thanks for the well-wishes on the secondary objective. I do recommend the Intraining clinic if you want to get faster At least in the group I took, they had a bunch of guest speakers, the most useful of which were the ones speaking about injuries and how to avoid / minimize them. Also I found the runs where we alternated fast/slow were really good for building up the ability to run at a faster pace without getting out of breath as quickly.
Heidi,
Thanks for keeping up – I’ll be inclined to post more about Sun Run 2009, although I think I will need to go for a more holistic approach in order to get better results. I’ll try to continue to post about post-Sun Run exercise routines.
I celebrated by eating a massive portion of prime rib tonight. I probably ate twice my calorie burn from the 10km run!
The Hornby Hill (up to the bridge) wasn’t bad in terms of width, but there was a huge choke point when you had to turn onto the bridge (where it thankfully flattened out a bit, this was at the 5km mark).
Now that I’m in a more cranky mood, however, I will completely agree with you about the people walking on the extreme left. In fact, there were people that were wearing green bibs that were walking about a minute after the initial downhill stretch! I estimate that I lost around 30 seconds of time slowing down in situations, and also time/distance wasted weaving around people. I bet you a lot of people were first-timers that said “yeah, I can run it in 50 minutes since I can run a kilometer in 5 minutes!”.
It’s quite apparent that the event is going to have more scaling difficulties as more people continue to sign up. I couldn’t imagine them cramming 100,000 people in the event.
Declan –
Were you expecting such a fast time? Because your performance is dramatically improved from your last year’s time. I’m curious as to your training technique as I’ve just self-trained all three years.
Well, I did the Spring Runoff 8k in Stanley Park in 38:42 a month and a half ago and I had done a couple of self-timed/measured 10k practice runs in around 48-50 minutes so I figured I could beat 50 minutes if all went well but wasn’t sure by how much.
Like I said, the intraining course was quite helpful. With my various ankle/knee/hip and back problems I can’t really put up a ton of practice kilometres (ran 2 or 3 times a week for 3 months prior to the race) so I think the key was doing speed and hill training which gave an intense workout without taking too long or putting too much strain on the joints. I’m down a few pounds from last year and I think I redistributed a few of the remaining pounds away from the waist so that helps as well. It sounds dumb but buying an actual pair of proper running shoes helped too, mostly with reducing injuries.
I agree that I think they are hitting the limits in terms of number of participants. I talked to a co-worker who walked the run and they said that next year they were going to sign up for a faster group so they wouldn’t have to wait as long before they got to start. I suggested they better stay to the right or I would run them over! :) Seriously, I think that is a motivator for many people.
I agree, it was so cool but it was so much fun that I fogot how cool was it until after the finishing line. Both of my hand was icy cool. My time is similar as last year 1:05. I am ok with the time because I start training a month ago before the Sun Run.
April 20 is my birthday and I had half of my 6″ B-cake. I pretty sure I over my daily calorie, but it ok after a good run.
I wonder if anybody know where is the best running route downtown (start Howe and Robson). I always go to the waterfront and would like to change my route a little bit.
Congra to all of you.
Good for you Sacha. I have yet to do the Sun Run myself. Each year I say “this year”, and it has yet to happen. Does walking a golf course count?
I agree about the annoyance of large groups of people walking on the left and clogging up the route for runners. Maybe we should have a Sun Walk for those people and runners have their own race.
Chad – Augusta is 7200 yards, so that’s about 6.5 kilometers right there… you have a point. Hmmmmm…
6.5 KM in 3 hours? Chad, you can do better than that.
Hey Guys, stop bitching about too many people. This is a race to get bodies out there and have a good time. I did my first SunRun in 2000 at 56 and now have 6 marathons behind me. I still come back to the run that got me inspired as it will many others. There are plenty of other less crowded 10Ks if you want to clock a good time. Keep on truking!
I don’t think the bitching was about the quantity of people, just rather the people that were on the left hand side that were walking and blocking forward progress.