Wow! That is some kind of course... Even familiar with it (put aside a detour Chops and I had never noticed on the maps), the Westmount 5 & 10 K course is a killer.
Lots of hills, great part of town to run in, lots of volunteers, and a fantastic organization overall... Nowhere for $20 do you get Chip time, volunteers encouraging you at virtually every street corner, and such goodies in terms of food, drinks, prize drawings, and more. Hats off to the Westmount YMCA, the Running Room, and Puma.
Shortly after signing up, I caught up to Chops near the 5 K finish line. Within a few minutes, I spotted about 150 meters out a big guy looking at the ground right in front of him, with an occasional rise of the head, kind of like coming up for air. There is only one person I know who looks at the ground like that under heavy effort... "Look Chops! That's Ralf coming down the hill to the finish line!" Ralf finished with a great time, and a strained but exalted look on his face. Good work, Ralf.
At that point, Ralf said he would stick around for some pictures and to see us after the race. Wow... cool. And you know what? He probably covered another 5 K taking snapshots of us from at least 4 or 5 different spots around the course. Ralf... you are awesome! Thanks for the support!
As to my race, I really wanted to hold pace for the first loop, see how I felt, and then perhaps pick up the pace a bit on the second loop if I had hit a good rythm. Typically, I am very slow to get going... I take forever (like 45-60 min...
) to really get into a groove, and under race situations, worried about not being to catch up to a slow start later, I tend to start off way too fast (for me), and just hang on for dear life at the end. I've done this repeatedly over the years, over a variety of distances, despite the fact that I know that my long warmup time makes me a natural to achieve negative splits. Last week's HM was a rare exception. Maybe I can set a trend here...
So first, a rough topography::
1 K: We start by going uphill on Côte St-Antoine (tough start!), pretty flat to Claremont, up Claremont (tough but short);
2 K: very slight incline, with some uphill bumps, up Westmount Ave;
3 K: down Forden, around Mulroney's house, then up Forden, and up the rest of Westmount Ave (the toughest uphill segment of the run), down for 50 m on Cedar, and then maybe 300-400 m at an incline on Cedar until Ramezay... killer segment!
4 K: down Montrose... aaaah! time to catch up a bit on the pace, without overdoing it;
5 K: still going down Montrose, down the side of Murray Hill park, and start up CSA again, 5 K marker is halfway up the hill;
6 K: mainly same as 1 K, but about 200 m later;
7 K: same as 2 K + 200 m
8 K: same as 3 K + 200 m
9 K: same as 4 K + 200 m
10 K: up 3/4 of CSA a third time, but before hitting the really tough part, turn left down Arlington, and race downhill to the finish line (I love those downhill sprints to the finish...).
I missed a few markers, so here are the times I have
1 K: 5:17
2 K: 10:21
5 K: 25:23
7 K: 35:26
8 K: 41:00
10 K: 49:45
Hey! Look at that... another negative split! 25:23 for the first loop, 24:22 on the second. HR was pretty much 95-99% HR max on the uphills, 90-95% on the flats and downhills, except for the last 2 K where I kept the HR at 95% and above, trying to kept up maximun effort on the declines to improve my time. It also helped that I was closing in on Chops, and I could see him about 150 m ahead. Finished right near HR max (177 BPM). I guess this race could go under the heading of a Lactate Threshold training run.
Despite the high HR, it's amazing how under these circumstances you can really feel yourself recovering when your HR drops into the low 160s (90-92% HR max for me), down from 170-175 (95-98%).
Hit the finish line, with Ralf taking more pictures, picked up a 4th bottle of Propel (1 in my goodies bag, 2 given to me pre-race), and went up into the Westmount Y's gym for oranges, bananas, bagels & cream cheese, fruit rolls, and yogourt. I didn't go for the fruit cakes, since I am allergic to nuts & peanuts, but there were those, and some soya stuff (blerk!). I listened carefully to the Mix 96 in-home announcer in case I had won a drawing prize, but only Ralf, among the 3 of us, did.
So that's it for now. Great time was had by all on this particular set of evil hills, even if no PBs were set (just not the right kind of course for it).
Ralf, we are on for Tuesday @ 7 AM, and for the rest of the gang, more evil hills on Thursday @ 6 PM.
Take care.
Mars
