10 days to Grouse Grind Run

I'm now in the final 10 days before the Grouse Grind Mountain Run on Sept 23rd. I decided to go in the run this year because I turned 40 and I thought I might have a shot at doing well. The idea first ocurred to me 2 years ago, just 9 days before the kids were born, when I set my personal best of 35:50. Now the race is a bit longer than the course that I use, which roughly adds 1:45 for 37:45 estimate of the race course.

Curious as to what a 37:35 would do in the race I took a look at the past 3 years of results. I noticed that there was a "M4049" group and I thought hmm... By year, a 37:35 would do:
2004: 35/242 males, 6/63 M4049
2005: 52/323 males, 9/96 M4049
2006: 50/350 males, 9/77 M4049

Then I wondered how fast could I really get at the grind? Dropping weight, training hard etc. I've been roughly targetting a time of 34 minutes for my course, plus 1:45 for a 35:45 time. That places results of:
2004: 25/242 males, 1/63 M4049
2005: 39/323 males, 5/96 M4049
2006: 28/350 males, 3/77 M4049

In 3 of the past 4 years, that would actually get a medal in my age group! Now overall and age group placement is very variable so who knows. It all depends on who shows up. You'll notice that the same times vary year by year. I talked to one guy who laughed ruefully and said "yeah people do that" when I said I was trying to do well in my age group having turned 40. I asked him how he did, which was 35:15. I thought that was great but it turns out that's 4th in the age group in 2005 and he'd have needed 34:14 to get 3rd. Yeouch, that's a smoking fast time! Also, the course has changed somewhat as the GVRD has been making improvements. It's hard to know exactly, but I think the times will be a little faster this year.

What would it take to do my target time? One obvious thing from the graph of weight/time that I've collected over the past 6 years - you can see the mission complete version from 2 years ago - is a weight of somewhere between 176 and 178 lbs. Considering I looked "skeletal" in Deanna's description when I was down to 177 just after the kids where born, that didn't seem too likely.

I decided to see how things were going in July before deciding. End of June looked good with a time of 36:55 weighing 190. It did seem like a good thing to drop a bunch of that weight. After returning from Ireland at the end of July, I've cut out many things, like my daily "mochas", almost all deserts, kind of watching my alcohol and food consumption. I've been regularly taking vitamins and electrolyte replacements.

Obviously a lot of training would have to be done. Since April 14th, 5 months ago, I've done the Grind 36 times, averaging close to 2/week. Factoring out the 32 days that I've been away in that time, that's actually 36 times in 120 or about once every 3 days at home. In the past 3 weeks I've added about 20 minutes of leg raises/lunges, etc. at the top for altitude training. Included in that is 12 times carrying one of the kids and once carrying both. My daughter and I set our best this year with 47:30, erasing last years 48:45. I did regular leg workouts during the winter months, regular team ultimate in the summer, and the occasional run, bike, or personal training session to up the exercise count.

Travel is always hard to deal with and I was away for 30 days in the past 120. I've been mostly successful in exercising during travel. During our 2 week trip to Ireland, I did 4 runs of >50 minutes and a gym workout. In the past 6 days of travel to Banff for a family wedding, I did 3 cardio workouts including lots of hill running.

How are the results? Well, decent but a little disappointing to be honest. My past 3 runs have been 35:15, 34:50, 35 on my course and 37:10, 36:36, 36:45 on the official race course. Bodyweight is fluxuating between 178 and 181. Body fat is 6.2%. That's an awful lot of work to get only a minute faster than I did 2 years ago! I wasn't able to reduce some of the "extra" consumptions as much as I had wanted but it's pretty hard to reduce my weight any further.

I've tried various approaches to the course to determine my optimum pace. I've found that if I'm 9 minutes to the bridge, then I finish around 35 minutes, and if I'm around 8:35-8:45 to the bridge, then I finish around 35:30-36:30. Going out too fast - what we called "dreaming the impossible dream" - has to be avoided, despite the temptation.

I think to get to my target time, I'm going to need some real breaks over the next 10 days. First is the weather. I'm finding it still just a little too hot - today's weather peaked at 19 degrees and was probably 15 on the trail. If I could have a rainy cold day, I'm sure I could shave 30-45 seconds off. Sadly, the 14 day forecast doesn't look good. Temperatues are predicted to be way above average through the next 10 days, including highs of 24 on my last hard training day of the 20th and high of 19 degrees on race day. I pray that the rain and 15 degree high that's predicted for the 25th comes early!

Secondly, I need to get some good sleep. Almost every night over the past 4 weeks has had major interruptions, for example: last night Air Canada called at 12:15am about our stroller they lost, and 2 nights ago the kids were up at 1:45 and 3:15. Thirdly, I need to keep training hard with no injuries. Fourthly, I'll really need a "race pump" to help me add just a little bit of speed without going out too fast. But I don't know how much extra "gas" there is in the tank, as I'm averaging 176 bpm over the course and peaking around 182 at the end. Fifthly, have to watch my diet to make sure I'm "primed" for race day. I'm not really planning on trying to lose any more weight before race day but I am going to definitely cut down on fat and alcohol consumption. Finally, I need some plain old luck.

I'll let y'all know in just under 2 weeks how it goes..