Sunday, November 11, 2007

More Race Info

This is the video of me finishing. It's so grainy that you can't tell who I am, but that's me with the chest strap heart rate monitor. The temperature at Hobby Airport started at 66.2 degrees and climbed to 73.4 by the end of my run for an average of 69.8 degrees.

http://www.finishcam.com/Events/2007-HMSA-Classical-25K-Fleet-Feet-25K-Relay/WatchFinish.asp?FinisherId=3761


This is an email from Sean Wade, the Kenyan Way coach, regarding the heat and how it affects performance:
"Hi runners, this email is really for those of you who ran the 25K. I guess I should have issued a heat warning in my previous email last week. When the weather is hot like it was Sunday it is virtually impossible to achieve the goal you set out prior to the race. In those conditions if your goal pace was under 8 min per mile I would give an allowance of 15-20 seconds per mile and if your goal pace was above 8 minutes then an allowance of 30-40 seconds per mile seems appropriate. Now the problem is if you went out too fast you may well have died (bonked) the last last and lost much more time. Do not worry if you struggled out there. 95% of you did. You need to make sure you recover this week and get ready for the long runs coming up in cooler weather. The bulk of our training takes place in the next 7 weeks. If you are in the speed work program skip hill tonight if you did the 25K. Do what ever it takes to recover this week. Come out Wednesday and take it easy on the workout scheduled or just jog easy on your own. Stay hydrated and make sure you run easy/slow to recover. "


I don't know about knocking 15-20 seconds per mile off of my time, but it's reassuring to think that I probably would have cracked 7:00 in 50 degree weather. I'm hoping for 40-50 degrees in Dallas.

1 comment:

Cory said...

While training this past summer, I wondered how temperature and humidity impact times. I found a few different ideas. The one that seems to be close to accurate for me is:

For every degree over 60, add 1 second per mile to pace.

Looking back at my long runs and even shorter tempo runs, this adjustment for temperature works fairly well.

Of course, this doesn't account for humidity. I found a suggested formula that uses heat index (which of course considers temperature and humidity) but didn't find that it translated well for me and it can only be used when temperatures exceed 80.