The Adidas “Track your runner” text service for the London Marathon still isn’t available … they’re running out of time!
Month: April 2009
If the hat fits
Passing by a railway bridge in Chelsea yesterday, I saw this sign
London Marathon – Setting The Targets
Just seven days before the last marathon I ran, in 2006, I set out my targets in this blog. They were:
- Finish inside 4 hours
- Be in the top 10,000 finishers
Looking back at that post, I was amazed to see that I’d even suggested that I might finish in 3h 52m (I actually ran it in 3h 51m 8s).
This year, I thought I’d set myself roughly the same goal, although plainly I want to better my time, even if only be seconds. But what of the position? Should I be thinking about improving that?
I checked back over the previous few years and someone with a time of 3h 51m 8s would have placed as follows:
That’s a spread of 3,083 between the lowest place number and the highest place number. That’s a much bigger spread than I’d imagined would be the case. Part of it might be weather related (2007 – where I would have placed highest had I run my time – was a very hot day and overall performance was down) but 2006 and 2008 saw much the same weather (damp and rainy throughout the race). So what’s going on?
One option I wondered about is whether the organisers have changed the way that they allocate places. For instance, I found in 2003 that having the same finish time gave you incremental placing (decided I’m not sure how – maybe the chip timers record, but don’t publish, can go sub-second):
In other years, people with the same finish time are given the same place number – but then the next place awarded reflects however many people had the same time. So that can’t be it.
Any other ideas?
London Marathon 2009 – two weeks today
Just finished my last long run before the marathon. Home to Tower Bridge and back, following the last 4 miles of the marathon route itself, nearly arrested by some burly policemen who were closing off the road in front of Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard – I thought the crowds were starting early to get the best places ahead of the marathon.
Last time I ran London, in 2006, my race profile looked like this:
Plainly I went out too fast – I started the race on the white line (literally at the very front, with 1000s of people behind me, of whom at least 10,000 overtook me in the first 2 miles despite me going as fast as I could). I’m not sure if I’m starting in the same place this year, but I know enough this time to get over to the side as quickly as possible. And then I can run a little more like I ran in NY later that same year:
I finished a little slower in NY – 3:58 versus 3:51 – but I put that down to it being the second marathon in a year. My plan for London is to go out at a pretty even pace of around 5:20 to 5:30 and try and maintain that through the whole race, so finishing around 3:50 (allowing for some slowdown at the end).
For those out to watch the race, here’s the course map – but there will be better maps in the newspapers in the couple of days beforehand:
<With the training done, the challenge now is to stay healthy, eat well, get some rest in the couple of days leading up to the race and then run to plan. Over the last few months I've put a lot of running in:
The total since September is just short of 800km. This year’s totals compare pretty favourably with those for London and New York in 2006, although I was little behind last month (put that down to a week of skiing).
London Marathon 2009
The London Marathon team have put in place a “track a runner by text” service this year. The New York folks had this in 2006 and I’m delighted it’s made it to London this year.
If you want to track a runner – any runner – text the word “run” to 83040 (it’s a service run by Adidas) and they’ll text you back a link (or, they will do – it’s not quite working yet but they promise it will be in a few days). Still, text now so that they know you want to get the link when it is working.
If you want to track my progress, my running number is 22801
Once you’ve signed up, the service will text you when I cross each 5km point. I’m not sure if it will be the same as it was in NY, but the time you’ll get sent is my “gun” time (i.e. how long after the starting pistol was fired did I cross that point), not my actual time (i.e. how long after I actually crossed the start line did I reach that point). But if you’re on the route, you’ll be able to figure out roughly where i am, using an average of 5m 15s to 5m 30s per km.
Hope to see you somewhere on the route.
Reading Half Marathon 2009
Last Sunday was the Reading Half Marathon, a race I’ve run once before. It’s a well supported race – the organisers said around 16,000 runners this time. The course is an out and back from the football stadium – you start outside but finish by running into the stadium itself, which is a real buzz (nearly as big a buzz as just finishing it). I ran 1:43:48 according to the official timer – which is around a minute slower than my best ever time.
My plan was to run faster than I had at Fleet two weeks ago and break 1:45 if I could. I’d spent the previous week skiing – with the inevitable apres-ski, not my usual preparation for a race, so I was thinking that my chances were low. The first 3 or 4km were slow – there were a lot of people around, even though I started at the front of the 1:45 section (plenty of people who had started alongside me were walking within 2km so I don’t think too many people pay any attention to where the organisers think they should start).
You can see from the pace graph that I ran the bulk of the race faster than 5min/km (which I need to do to get inside 1:45) – and there’s one km at the mid-way point where I realised I was a bit behind plan and needed to catch up. If I add elevation, you can see that the fastest km was actually on the steepest climb – around mile 7.
And then, finally, just because it really surprised me to run a negative split – here’s the run split into 10km chunks showing that I ran the back half faster than the front half.
I looked at my training log for the last few weeks and it’s over 5 weeks since I ran longer than 21km. I hadn’t realised that. So now I’m a bit worried that whilst I can run a fast half, I might not have the stamina for the second half. I couldn’t have run another 21km after Reading, that’s for sure.