Oshkosh Half Marathon

Today I officially kicked off my "scheduled" 2012 race season with the Oshkosh 1/2 marathon. We got up at 4am (ugh) and drove the 90 minute drive up to Oshkosh for the race. I ate a pack of GU chomps on the way there. The weather was cool, but great for running. I warmed up for 15 minutes and did 3x30 second intervals at around 5:30 min/mile pace. I took off my warm up clothes and headed over to the starting line.

I lined up in the front row and happened to look over to my right to see some guy totally decked out in Zoot Ultra Team apparel...it was Dana!! I think he was as shocked as I was.

We started the race and everyone took off super fast. The 5k runners had started with us so it was hard to know who was running what distance. I looked down at my Garmin and noticed that I was averaging 5:38 min/mile pace (yikes!). This was a bit fast as my goal was to run between 6:30-6:45 min/miles. I backed it off some and reminded myself that some of these people were running the 5k. After the 5k runners turned off I could see that there was only 1 woman ahead of me. She was pretty far out there and when we hit the first mile marker I noticed that I had run a 6:12 minute mile. I decided to let her go and run my own race. I figured that I would settle into my pace and just see what happened with her. I then ran the next 3-4 miles pretty consistently at 6:25-6:30 min/mile pace, but started to get a slight side stitch. Therefore, I backed it off a bit and ran 6:30-6:35 min/mile pace, which eased the stitch.

Around mile 7 there was a slight out and back section. I was able to see the lead men come around the corner (their mile 9ish) and noticed that Dana was in 1st place! He was running super fast, but had a group of 3 college runners only about 10-15 feet behind him. I gave him a Zoot wave and encouraged him on. (Matt later said that Dana got eaten up by the pack around mile 10, but he held on for 3rd and was only 7 seconds behind the other guys). I held this pace until about mile 10-11 and then I started to fade a bit, running around 6:47 min/mile pace. I was able to run the last mile in 6:39, and finished with a PR of 1:26.

I was pleased with the race and ended up placing 2nd OA. It was a great way to kick off the season.

My slick new Zoot cycling kit!!!

Here's me in my really slick new Zoot Ultra Team cycling kit.

South Shore 1/2 Marathon

Last weekend I decided to do the South Shore 1/2 marathon as part of my training. I was planning to do a 90 minute training run that day anyway, and the thought of running with large herds of people sounded more appealing than running alone. Needless to say I was pretty relaxed as I planned on running easy. It was kind of nice to show up at a race, sit back and spectate while registering and running. I ran with my friend Jodi (who found out she is just a bit faster than she thought that day...). The plan was just to hold around 7:30/mile pace for the entire run. Jodi had averaged 7:22/mile pace last year and she just wanted to have a good race. We started out running and were consistently and easily between 7:00/mile and 7:30/mile. Jodi was doing awesome! She was even talking to me. Therefore, at the 1/2 way point (which was also the turn around), we could see all of the women ahead of us. Jodi counted and mentioned that we were numbers 11 & 12. Seeing how good she was looking I encouraged her to push the pace a bit more and try to get top 10. She was agreeable, so we decided to pick it up a bit. The last 4 miles we were sub 7's. Jodi totally smoked it and I cheered her into the finish line. She PR'ed that day by 4-5 minutes and placed 9th OA! I was pleased with my training run (although it was a bit faster than what I had planned) as I was within 1.5 minutes of my PR. I believe Jodi and I can both run much faster as we were quite social the first 6-7 miles of the race. I'm looking forward to racing the Oshkosh 1/2 marathon in a couple of weeks. It's gonna be a fast one!

Garmin 910xt rocks!

I came back home to good old WI after attending the Zoot camp in Carlsbad, CA and tried out my new Garmin 910xt right away...I discovered that it totally ROCKS! In my opinion, the 910xt is a big improvement over the 310xt that I raced and trained with last year. It's lighter, it finds the satallite faster (and sometimes even indoors!), the display is easier to read, and the display of the mile splits flashes in larger print. (Apparently I must have really crappy vision...). As far as swimming goes, you can now use this model in the pool and it will even count your lengths and give you a stroke count/swim efficiency score. We tried it in the outdoor pool in CA and it worked pretty well for counting lengths. We did not try to calculate a swim efficiency score. I'll have to try that this summer. Overall, I was impressed by the improvements made from the 310xt, which I already thought was a great watch. Thanks to our sponsor Garmin for the support and for upgrading an already great product! I look forward to training and racing with my new 910xt this season!

Zoot Camp 2012

This was my 2nd year attending the Zoot camp in beautiful Carlsbad, CA. I was excited to go back to CA as I fell in love with the San Diego area last year when I visited for the first time. This year was especially nice because Matt happened to be in CA for work. I flew into San Diego on Friday afternoon, picked Matt up at work, and checked into the Grand Pacific Palisades where the Zoot team was staying. We got up Saturday morning and headed to the Oceanside 70.3 race to watch. It was an overcast, cool day but the athletes raced well. We stood at T2 and watched Andy Potts, Heather Jackson, and Melanie McQuaid get off the bike and run great races. We cheered loudly for the Zoot team and even got Mark Harms to smile on the run! We enjoyed the nice CA weather with a training run and a few swims at the outdoor salt water lap pool at the hotel. It was fantastic!

Saturday night I met up with the Zoot team for dinner. Very tasty :) Then Sunday we met for a team breakfast and to get information from our sponsors. We have a couple of new really great sponsors this year including Spy sunglasses and Speedfill waterbottle systems. Garmin was there as well and showed us how to operate our new 910xt watches. We got a chance to see the 2012 and preview the 2013 Zoot products. They look really great and I'm excited to be sporting a lot of them this year!

Sunday night we had another team dinner at a really cool brewery and took team photos. I met some more new fast and friendly team mates and even convinced a few of them to go for frozen yogurt after dinner :) Monday morning we snuck in another swim, ate some breakfast with some fellow team members, and then headed our seperate ways. I can't wait to race for Zoot again this year and look forward to seeing some of my fellow Zooters at races over the course of the season! Thanks to Zoot and our sponsors for another great team camp this year!