Bill Menees's Blog

The Bad News

The 2009 Country Music Half Marathon officially kicked my butt. I was aiming for a 1:30, and I finished at 1:44. Yuck.

I lost the 1:30 group by mile 5. I fell off PR pace by mile 10. After that I didn’t care about my time, except I felt obligated to finish faster than last year. So in the last 3.1 miles I walked some, drank a cold beer, and lollygagged to the finish line at 1:44 something. It was a disgusting, humiliating race. Every long run all year felt better than this one. I stunk this up royally.

My 5K split was 21:17 (6:51), and my 10K split was 43:48 (7:02). My 10 mile split was 1:14:19 (7:26), and by that point 8 minute miles were the best I could do. My time and pace over the last 3.1 miles (including walking and beer drinking) were 30:27 and 9:47. Sheesh.

The weather was not good for racing, but my day could have been worse. More than 40 runners were taken by ambulance to Metro General hospital, and one runner died of a "sudden cardiac event" after crossing the finish line. A dark day indeed.

The Good News

From this mess I've learned some lessons that should make me a better racer in the future. Probably the most important lesson is that I should only worry about running the best race I can on the current day in the current conditions. I was devistated by mile 10 when I knew I'd missed both my goal and any shot at a PR. But I foolishly threw away the last 3.1 miles and stopped racing.

The point of a race is to finish as fast as you can, and I gave up on that. I've never given up in a race before, not even in my two awful Flying Monkey finishes. At the Flying Monkey Marathons I didn't really expect to do well, so going into them I had a "do the best I can no matter what" mindset. But my hopes were too high for the CM Half given the weather that was dealt to me. Now I see that that was no reason to quit, but I didn't get that on Saturday. I'd much rather be able to look back and say I did my best to run a 1:39 than to have to admit that I gave up and ran a 1:44. I won't make that mistake again.

Another lesson I learned is that if I'm having a truly terrible day because of the weather then probably everyone else is too. Even with my half-hearted finish, I ended up in the top 3.3% overall (760 out of 22749), the top 7% in my age group (98 out of 1398), and the top 7% in my gender (599 out of 8244). Those percentages aren't too bad, but they make me feel like a real loser for giving up and letting dozens (or hundreds?) of people pass me in the final miles while I sipped a beer and jogged.

A final important lesson is that I shouldn't put all my eggs in one basket by having a single goal race. This was the only half marathon on my spring race calendar. I skipped the Frostbite Half in February and the Tom King Half in March, so now I have to wait until this fall to "redeem myself". I'll probably put several halfs on my fall calendar (e.g., Middle Half Oct. 3, Music City Half Oct. 18, Let Freedom Run Nov. 1 (?)).

Yesterday I mailed my entry for next weekend’s Wild Thang 9Mi trail run. I’m getting right back on the wagon or the horse or whatever cliché involves racing and a little bit of drinking. Here's hoping for better weather and faster running!

Labels: Running

Last weekend, my wife and I went to Union City, TN to visit my mom and dad. While there we ran the Union City Civitan Club's Running For Prevention of Child Abuse 5K. We both had a good time and did well in the race.



They don't have a web site to post the results, so the race director emailed them to us. I've posted them now, so I can get them uploaded to Athlinks. I also ran them through NashDash.com's WMA Age Grade Calculator, so I could see our age graded times and percentages (in the table below).

Number	FirstName	LastName	Time	Place	SexPl	AgePl	Age	Sex	City	State	AgeGrade	Graded%
4	Blake	Gallimore	19:11	1	1	1	34	M	Dresden	TN	18:52	68.34%
3	Bill	Menees	20:12	2	2	1	38	M	Madison	TN	19:22	66.58%
22	Travis	Laird	21:19	3	3	1	27	M	Dyersburg	TN	21:19	60.52%
30	Will	McBride	22:23	4	4	1	17	M	Rives	TN	21:22	60.35%
6	Kevin	Powell	24:50	5	5	2	16	M	Troy	TN	23:23	55.15%
7	Nathan	Powell	26:01	6	6	3	15	M	Troy	TN	24:06	53.51%
16	Hope	Montegomery	27:44	7	1	4	16	F	Union City	TN	26:07	49.38%
17	Meagan	Montegomery	29:11	8	2	5	16	F	Union City	TN	27:29	46.93%
24	Lori	Larcom	30:03	9	3	2	38	F	Union City	TN	28:49	44.75%
23	Emily	McGee	30:04	10	4	6	19	F	Union City	TN	29:26	43.82%
5	Robert	Powell	30:19	11	7	1	42	M	Troy	TN	28:13	45.70%
35	Madison	Turner	30:44	12	5	7	15	F	Union City	TN	28:28	45.30%
2	Amy	Oldham	30:59	13	6	3	38	F	Madison	TN	29:43	43.41%
29	Joe	Keith	31:16	14	8	2	29	M			31:14	41.30%
8	Michelle	Powell	31:21	15	7	2	41	F	Troy	TN	29:24	43.87%
25	Stephen	Laird	31:43	16	9	1	10	M	Dyersburg	TN	25:54	49.78%
26	Natalie	Huebrier	32:06	17	8	1	22	F	Union City	TN	32:05	40.20%
27	Karl	Huebrier	32:08	18	10	3	25	M	Union City	TN	32:08	40.15%
28	Lindsey	Stocks	32:29	19	9	4	26	F	Newbern	TN	32:29	39.71%
20	Katie	Hardin	32:45	20	10	8	16	F	Kenton	TN	30:50	41.82%
21	Angela	Laird	36:27	21	11	5	27	F	Dyersburg	TN	36:27	35.39%
15	Lisa	Williams	36:38	22	12	3	42	F	Union City	TN	34:06	37.82%
21	Hunter	Laird	36:41	23	11	2	6	M	Dyersburg	TN	25:18	50.97%
1	Chris	Menees	36:50	24	13	4	42	F	Union City	TN	34:17	37.62%
18	Laquisha	Smith	45:18	25	14	3	12	F	Union City	TN	39:17	32.83%
33	Brenna	Duncan	45:57	26	15	9	17	F	Union City	TN	43:52	29.40%
32	Edie	Martin	45:58	27	16	4	38	F	Union City	TN	44:05	29.26%
36	Blair	Beachum	45:59	28	17	10	15	F	Union City	TN	42:36	30.28%
34	Madison	Baldwin	46:00	29	18	11	15	F	Union City	TN	42:37	30.26%
9	April	McCord	50:13	30	19	4	13	F	Union City	TN	44:39	28.88%
11	Precious	Ware	50:14	31	20	5	12	F	Union City	TN	43:34	29.60%
10	Hannah	Pryor	50:19	32	21	6	12	F	Union City	TN	43:38	29.55%
19	Mariah	Lebron	50:28	33	22	7	11	F	Union City	TN	42:33	30.31%
12	Tania	Moreno	50:31	34	23	8	12	F	Union City	TN	43:49	29.44%
14	Johnette	Andrews	50:35	35	24	9	12	F	Union City	TN	43:52	29.40%
13	Dawn	Myers	50:38	36	25	10	12	F	Union City	TN	43:55	29.37%

Labels: Running

A few months ago I started a new website: NashDash.com. It contains a few running-related utilities that I've written when I couldn't find versions I liked elsewhere online. Currently, it contains:

• Single-Result Age Grading, which gives detailed age grading information for a single race result.
• Multi-Result Age Grading, which gives basic age grading information for an entire set of race results.
• Time Calculator, which allows you to enter expressions and formulas that use numbers, times, and dates. This is great for calculating paces, average times, etc.
• Unit Converter, which allows you to convert a quantity from one type of units to another.

I use the Time Calculator a lot. It's handy-dandy for calculating average interval paces, estimated finishing times for a given pace and distance, etc. I use the Single-Result Age Grading everytime I PR, and I use the Multi-Result Age Grading after important races like the Flying Monkey Marathon to see how everyone did relative to age grading.

Please check out what's there and let me know what you think, either through comments to this post, through NashDash's feedback link, or through email.

I have plans for other utilities that I may eventually get around to writing and publishing on NashDash. I've done some of the work on the following utilities, but they're not ready for general use yet:

• Pace Chart Generator - A lot of these exist on the net, but I have ideas for a generator different than any other I've seen. This is a low-priority item but relatively easy to code, so I may write it on some rainy day.
• Training Plan Generator - This would let you select or create training plans and then apply them to a calendar. For example, you could pick Hal Higdon's 5K Advanced training plan and choose to start it on Monday, April 6, 2009. Then you could view a printable calendar page and/or generate an iCalendar file that could be imported into any calendar program (e.g., Outlook, Google Calendar, iCal). This would be cool, but it's a big project, and I don't have much need for it. I've written about half of this, and I've imported about 60 good training plans I've found on the net. But it'll take a lot of motivation to ever finish this utility.
• Low-Cost Race Registration - It annoys me that Active.com charges such huge "processing fees" for race registrations, and they cram so many ads down your throat while overcharging you. I've done a lot of design work on implementing a low-cost race registration system so local running clubs (e.g., Nashville Striders) can offer race registrations without customers getting nailed for huge fees. I really want to implement this one day. This would benefit tons of people.

Labels: Running, Software