@Mark, small world, shucks I should of worn my EN visor or some gear and for sure we would have seen each other. Todays race was the only half marathon I could find this weekend and I'm really glad I went down to Olympia as TESC is such a beautiful place to run. Great job getting it done and liked your approach of using the 10k in the middle as test. It was a nice course.
@ David, I get it off of Training Peaks but I think other programs do it as well. It's a double edged sword because sometimes you'll be flying down a hill and killing your interval paces only to find out later that you were 10 seconds per mile slower than you should have been.
OTOH, if I'm going up a hill I find that I'm usually overdoing it when I look at my NGP later since I try to keep my real world pace close to the prescribed pace.
I'm not really sure what to make of my run test today. Mentally I was all over the place. Physically, I hated every minute of it. Time wasn't terrible, but well off my best. Just shy of 195m of elevation over 10k though... so not a great pancake flat 10k give it everything course. For some reason my result isn't up on the results page, but it looks like I should (assuming no one in front of me had a similar glitchy result issue) crack the top ten in the Ladies field.
@Stefan - yes, could do... But it gives me a worse vDOT than I currently have. I did a 5 mile last weekend (5 mile XC the day saturday, then 5 mile flat road race on Sunday) and ran a 35:14, which is consistent with a 10k I ran on NYE. I"m not sure if I should just leave my zones as they are and adjust after my half marathon on March 1.
Did my end of OS half marathon yesterday. Cool temps in the 30's but dry so overall a good day to run. Course was pretty flat with a little rise in the last mile. Ran 1:40:33 by my watch but the confusing aspect is that my watch recorded 13.2 miles which was confirmed by one other person. I realize there is a margin of error in running with GPS but all the mile markers were pretty much on target with my auto lap every mile until that last 0.1-0.2 miles. I ran pretty consistent pace until the last 2 miles when my pace slowed a little which I contribute to no long runs over 10 miles since last summer and having a hard time keeping my pace under control in the first 3 miles.
So the confusing thing is how to assign a vdot for this race. My previous tests have been 5K's on the TM giving me a vdot of 45. Taking yesterdays's HM time of 1:40:33 and plugging it into the calculator it comes up 44. If I use a time consistent with 13.1 miles then it's 45. But, it was a half marathon instead of a 5K. Based on how I was feeling through the first 10 miles I feel like my vdot is higher that 44-45 now. Any advice from the experts is greatly appreciated.
Did my end of OS half marathon yesterday. Cool temps in the 30's but dry so overall a good day to run. Course was pretty flat with a little rise in the last mile. Ran 1:40:33 by my watch but the confusing aspect is that my watch recorded 13.2 miles which was confirmed by one other person. I realize there is a margin of error in running with GPS but all the mile markers were pretty much on target with my auto lap every mile until that last 0.1-0.2 miles. I ran pretty consistent pace until the last 2 miles when my pace slowed a little which I contribute to no long runs over 10 miles since last summer and having a hard time keeping my pace under control in the first 3 miles.
So the confusing thing is how to assign a vdot for this race. My previous tests have been 5K's on the TM giving me a vdot of 45. Taking yesterdays's HM time of 1:40:33 and plugging it into the calculator it comes up 44. If I use a time consistent with 13.1 miles then it's 45. But, it was a half marathon instead of a 5K. Based on how I was feeling through the first 10 miles I feel like my vdot is higher that 44-45 now. Any advice from the experts is greatly appreciated.
Hi Tom,
So I see a couple of questions here which I will put my spin on. The first about distance. Was the course a certified HM course? If not, then it could be that it was a little longer than 13.1 miles. Remember that 0.1 miles is about 526 feet (0.7% of the total distance) and there are several ways to go about getting off by that much in 13.1 miles or 68,906 feet. A certified course assumes that the line is a straightest line that you can run from start to finish, so unless indicated otherwise, you would run from apex to apex of curves, cut as close to the curb as possible when going around corners (I think the rules say it has to be measured 6 inches from the curb), etc. It's often hard to know the exact route they took when they measured the course. I did a HM yesterday on a certified course and came in 0.06 miles short of a HM. But there were specific instructions on how to run the course which I didn't do since I was not interested in the overall HM distance but the 10k distance within the race that I ran according to my Garmin. So I cut corners where I shouldn't have and over the course of the race that reduced the distance I ran slightly, again by 0.06 miles or 337 feet. When you start thinking about it in terms of feet it doesn't sound like a whole lot.
Now for the vDot. I was new to EN last year and when I was reading about the OS I remember that the rationale for doing a HM as the end test is that it will give you a vDot reading that is more in line with what you should be shooting for in a HIM or IM. That's because the 5k test is a little misleading for setting longer distance goals (even with the fudge factors that the calculators use). I did a HM test at the end of the OS last year and my vDot fell by a couple of points compared to my 5k tests earlier in the OS. I went with the HM test vDot and did pretty good in the IM marathon I did last year. I actually raced it faster than my predicted pace on a very hot day.
If you read my post about my race yesterday you'll notice that my 10k time resulted in a 44 vDot, but the NGP time resulted in a 45 vDot. Since that's where I've been at for a year now I'm going to keep it there rather than go down to the 44. I hope this helps.
Did the' Game Day 10K' in Newport news Va. for my run test. I didn't get enough for a vdot bump, but I'll call it a success because Zn4 for me is 8:44 pace, and I did it in a 8:39 average pace. The course ended up being a little long 6.38 mi per Garmin, total time 55:16. 6.2 mi@53:38
@ Rachel, Sounds like maybe it was just a bad day. Those happen sometimes. Check out Stefan's run test report from a couple of days ago or my bike test report. Sometimes it just sucks and things go wrong. If you mistrust the results and you haven't had any problems hitting your intervals during the last couple of weeks of the NOS then I'd stand pat and retest in two to 4 weeks. The fact that you did two hard runs last weekend could be a factor too. Are you going into swim camp and then get faster in two weeks? If so, I think the get faster plan has tests in the first week. You could give your legs a little rest and start fresh there.
Run Test Complete. My half marathon isn't until March so decided to roll my own 10km for now as a check point. 10km in 41:14 which is a PR by a couple of minutes. Woot! vDot = 50.1 vs. 47.6 at start of OS. https://www.strava.com/activities/249236223/
Followed the EN Wiki Pacing more or less and it helped. Splits were: 6:44, 6:45, 6:41, 6:37, 6:41, 6:25.
Recent results pretty consistent ... the Half Marathon was one of the long runs and included warmup and recovery intervals so think I have some room to improve there. 12/19 5km 20:03 vDot = 49.7 1/11 13.1mi 1:34:54 vDot = 48.0 2/1 10km 41:14 vDot = 50.1
Thanks everyone! Admittedly, I'm not the best on hills so in terms of a test course probably not ideal. I go from swim camp right in to my HIM plan. I have a half that I registered for before I joined EN with the intent of racing it as a test run but I will probably have to discuss that on the micro with Coach P. Probably just wasn't my day today, but still managed 9/579 for gender and 108/1132 overall. So, some positives to take away still :-)
Mixed feelings today with the Final run test. I did a half marathon this morning and it initially started off well. I was trying to over achieve here and it back fired. The race was going well until mile 9 and I was getting excited about and the new bump in vDOT that i would be achieving. Then at mile 10 my Achilles started to hurt and my Hamstrings started to cramp up. I had to slow down from 7:44 min/mile to almost 9:45 min/mile.
If I consider just 10k out of the half marathon them my vDOT would be 42. Any harm in using a vDOT of 42 instead of 41 for the upcoming Short Course and Get Fast training plan?
Overall I'm happy that my run time improved but just wish that I had finished stronger. Also a lesson learned is to stick to the pacing that you are supposed to run at and not try to over achieve significantly.
Just had a nice finish to the OS and now sipping my congratulatory chocolate milk! I was not sure how the legs would feel after finishing the new zones on yesterday's bike workout, but it came out well. I woke up to -30 with a bunch of -40 coming later in the week. Talked to the coaches about maybe not trying to go outside for this one and they suggested the same 5 km on the treadmill that I have done throughout the OS. I am registered for the Desert Classic Half Marathon in March near Tucson and they said to go all out on that one - with heat and sunshine - anyone else going to be in the area?
Results: Test #1 - 21:05 Test #2 - 20:30 Test #3 - 19:37 Best I have ever run outside was 19:59 years ago - not sure what this will translate to outdoors, but I sure like the improvement and the feeling of enjoying running "fast"! Pacing on the treadmill was good - I started at a 9.4, kept it for 2.5 miles and then increased slowly to 10 as I wanted to be sure I was under 20 min. Not much left at the end and I did not fall off the treadmill. Definitely a victory today! Thank you all for your posts through this dark nasty winter and I wish you all good luck in your next endeavors! See some of you in Swim Camp and hopefully some of you at IMCDA!
@David - Nice work! I am looking forward to your results this year. I want to see what I could do if I lost 10 lbs! Happy racing, twin!
Today I ran the Zena Road 15k and it was a really tough race. Not a flat section on the course. It went ok. I ran well until about 10k and then had to reign it in as I was suffering too much for a race/test at this point in the season. Anyway it was a good to get out for a race. I think these longer races are really tough for the OS since we focus more on the shorter/faster training. for sure it would be better to stick to 5k's and get consistent Googles to Googles comparisons between my tests.
I am sticking with my previous vDot and retest as part of my short-course plan in a few weeks. Here is my GPS on Strava.
Thanks for being an awesome OS group. See on Strava or in the Forums.
Thanks Mark M. for the input. It was a certified course and I ran the straightest line I could so I'm not sure what was going on. Think I will stick with my vdot of 45 for my HIM training coming up.
Tom, this is what I found "Often GPS measurements of races, especially marathons record a longer distance than the race. This is partly because the USATF technique for measuring the distance takes a path that is no more than 12 inches away from the tangent (corner), and few runners are able to run that close. In a large marathon you can be forced to take a line that is a long way from the tangent. The other factor is that on a straight line, the GPS error tends to give a slightly longer measurement." - http://fellrnr.com/wiki/GPS_Accuracy The course you did has a lot of quite straight roads. Also the weather was foggy yesterday morning. It seems your likely just seeing GPS errors.
David, thanks for the info. Lots of interesting information in the link. Could be GPS error. The only thing that is puzzling is the mile markers for the HM, the 10K and the 5K. All races finished at the same line but the mile 12 marker came (for the HM), then a little further down the road came the mile 2 marker (for the 5K) then a little further down the road came the 5 mile marker (for the 10K). Not sure the math works out for that and as I said earlier my auto lap alarm went off pretty close to the 12 mile marker. Oh well, I'm just going to use the 45 vdot. The only reason I'm at all discussing this is because I was close to a HM PR.
Ran the Nippy Niner for my test, unfortunately turned into a mud run! First part of run at 8:40 pace, then hit the mud and pace went to 10:00 mile. Must admit, it was fun. So, I estimate my Vdot went from 35 to 37.2 during NOS. Thanks to Scott for his leadership!
Comments
@ David, I get it off of Training Peaks but I think other programs do it as well. It's a double edged sword because sometimes you'll be flying down a hill and killing your interval paces only to find out later that you were 10 seconds per mile slower than you should have been.
OTOH, if I'm going up a hill I find that I'm usually overdoing it when I look at my NGP later since I try to keep my real world pace close to the prescribed pace.
https://www.strava.com/activities/248997688/overview
I have no idea what to do with this in terms of updating my paces, but it was nice to get out for a race today.
Did my end of OS half marathon yesterday. Cool temps in the 30's but dry so overall a good day to run. Course was pretty flat with a little rise in the last mile. Ran 1:40:33 by my watch but the confusing aspect is that my watch recorded 13.2 miles which was confirmed by one other person. I realize there is a margin of error in running with GPS but all the mile markers were pretty much on target with my auto lap every mile until that last 0.1-0.2 miles. I ran pretty consistent pace until the last 2 miles when my pace slowed a little which I contribute to no long runs over 10 miles since last summer and having a hard time keeping my pace under control in the first 3 miles.
So the confusing thing is how to assign a vdot for this race. My previous tests have been 5K's on the TM giving me a vdot of 45. Taking yesterdays's HM time of 1:40:33 and plugging it into the calculator it comes up 44. If I use a time consistent with 13.1 miles then it's 45. But, it was a half marathon instead of a 5K. Based on how I was feeling through the first 10 miles I feel like my vdot is higher that 44-45 now. Any advice from the experts is greatly appreciated.
Hi Tom,
So I see a couple of questions here which I will put my spin on. The first about distance. Was the course a certified HM course? If not, then it could be that it was a little longer than 13.1 miles. Remember that 0.1 miles is about 526 feet (0.7% of the total distance) and there are several ways to go about getting off by that much in 13.1 miles or 68,906 feet. A certified course assumes that the line is a straightest line that you can run from start to finish, so unless indicated otherwise, you would run from apex to apex of curves, cut as close to the curb as possible when going around corners (I think the rules say it has to be measured 6 inches from the curb), etc. It's often hard to know the exact route they took when they measured the course. I did a HM yesterday on a certified course and came in 0.06 miles short of a HM. But there were specific instructions on how to run the course which I didn't do since I was not interested in the overall HM distance but the 10k distance within the race that I ran according to my Garmin. So I cut corners where I shouldn't have and over the course of the race that reduced the distance I ran slightly, again by 0.06 miles or 337 feet. When you start thinking about it in terms of feet it doesn't sound like a whole lot.
Now for the vDot. I was new to EN last year and when I was reading about the OS I remember that the rationale for doing a HM as the end test is that it will give you a vDot reading that is more in line with what you should be shooting for in a HIM or IM. That's because the 5k test is a little misleading for setting longer distance goals (even with the fudge factors that the calculators use). I did a HM test at the end of the OS last year and my vDot fell by a couple of points compared to my 5k tests earlier in the OS. I went with the HM test vDot and did pretty good in the IM marathon I did last year. I actually raced it faster than my predicted pace on a very hot day.
If you read my post about my race yesterday you'll notice that my 10k time resulted in a 44 vDot, but the NGP time resulted in a 45 vDot. Since that's where I've been at for a year now I'm going to keep it there rather than go down to the 44. I hope this helps.
@ Rachel, Sounds like maybe it was just a bad day. Those happen sometimes. Check out Stefan's run test report from a couple of days ago or my bike test report. Sometimes it just sucks and things go wrong. If you mistrust the results and you haven't had any problems hitting your intervals during the last couple of weeks of the NOS then I'd stand pat and retest in two to 4 weeks. The fact that you did two hard runs last weekend could be a factor too. Are you going into swim camp and then get faster in two weeks? If so, I think the get faster plan has tests in the first week. You could give your legs a little rest and start fresh there.
10km in 41:14 which is a PR by a couple of minutes. Woot! vDot = 50.1 vs. 47.6 at start of OS.
https://www.strava.com/activities/249236223/
Followed the EN Wiki Pacing more or less and it helped. Splits were: 6:44, 6:45, 6:41, 6:37, 6:41, 6:25.
Recent results pretty consistent ... the Half Marathon was one of the long runs and included warmup and recovery intervals so think I have some room to improve there.
12/19 5km 20:03 vDot = 49.7
1/11 13.1mi 1:34:54 vDot = 48.0
2/1 10km 41:14 vDot = 50.1
Here is my Run results during the OutSeason.
Week#1 vDOT: 33 (5k)
Week#8 vDOT: 40 (5k)
Week#14 vDOT: 41 (Half Marathon - http://tpks.ws/25DE )
If I consider just 10k out of the half marathon them my vDOT would be 42. Any harm in using a vDOT of 42 instead of 41 for the upcoming Short Course and Get Fast training plan?
Overall I'm happy that my run time improved but just wish that I had finished stronger. Also a lesson learned is to stick to the pacing that you are supposed to run at and not try to over achieve significantly.
Results:
Test #1 - 21:05
Test #2 - 20:30
Test #3 - 19:37 Best I have ever run outside was 19:59 years ago - not sure what this will translate to outdoors, but I sure like the improvement and the feeling of enjoying running "fast"! Pacing on the treadmill was good - I started at a 9.4, kept it for 2.5 miles and then increased slowly to 10 as I wanted to be sure I was under 20 min. Not much left at the end and I did not fall off the treadmill. Definitely a victory today! Thank you all for your posts through this dark nasty winter and I wish you all good luck in your next endeavors! See some of you in Swim Camp and hopefully some of you at IMCDA!
@David - Nice work! I am looking forward to your results this year. I want to see what I could do if I lost 10 lbs! Happy racing, twin!
Today I ran the Zena Road 15k and it was a really tough race. Not a flat section on the course. It went ok. I ran well until about 10k and then had to reign it in as I was suffering too much for a race/test at this point in the season. Anyway it was a good to get out for a race. I think these longer races are really tough for the OS since we focus more on the shorter/faster training. for sure it would be better to stick to 5k's and get consistent Googles to Googles comparisons between my tests.
I am sticking with my previous vDot and retest as part of my short-course plan in a few weeks. Here is my GPS on Strava.
Thanks for being an awesome OS group. See on Strava or in the Forums.
"Often GPS measurements of races, especially marathons record a longer distance than the race. This is partly because the USATF technique for measuring the distance takes a path that is no more than 12 inches away from the tangent (corner), and few runners are able to run that close. In a large marathon you can be forced to take a line that is a long way from the tangent. The other factor is that on a straight line, the GPS error tends to give a slightly longer measurement." - http://fellrnr.com/wiki/GPS_Accuracy
The course you did has a lot of quite straight roads. Also the weather was foggy yesterday morning. It seems your likely just seeing GPS errors.