The Sunshine Coast is about a 40minute ferry ride from just outside of West Vancouver, and the race took place between the two main towns there. Starting in Gibsons the race headed towards Sechelt, ending in Davis Bay, a small village. The area is very beautiful and a great place to go for a race.
The race was a net downhill by just over 400ft and was also a point to point course, with a tailwind of about 10km/hr at the time I believe. I was aware of this prior to the race and expected to be able to run fairly fast but was surprised at how difficult it turned out to be. The hills were really tough and often too steep to run really fast down without thrashing your legs, and the wind didn't seem significant, being as the road was lined with big coniferous trees. Given the course and conditions I really don't know what to make of the time, so I will say that I am very pleased with the even effort I put forth and I'm certain the hills will give me a lot of strength. The race played out with me heading to the front with Mark Bomba and Jason Loutitt in tow, fully expecting them to go with me at least for the first mile since there was a $50 bonus for the first person to the one mile marker. They stuck shortly behind me and at the one mile(4:55) Jason rode up on my shoulder and more or less stayed on me till we reached mile 2 at 9:50. From then on I was on my own and passed 3mi in 15:06, 10k in 30:37, 10mi in 50:42. I didn't really keep track of the splits since they were more or less meaningless due to the never ending small and large hills. Between miles 8 and 10 I took a few looks over my shoulder to see how far back Bomba and Loutitt were and came to the conclusion I was going to finish up on top so I cruised in the last couple of miles, however in a lot of gut discomfort. All in all it was a very good day of training/racing.
As for the week of training, it was pretty good, with a strong long run and medium long run. I took the Thursday interval workout off because I was feeling like taking a bit of a rest after three good weeks of training and three big weeks coming up. Friday I sat down for a few hours and made some changes to the program that I am excited about and will write about later in the week.
Breakdown:
LR - 22mi @ 5:42.6/mi
MdL - 15mi @ 5:49.4/mi
Race - 13.1mi @ 5:04.0/mi
Supp - 1 - Strength Session
Volume - 112mi
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