Track marathon benchmarking: the speed discipline

It has been 14 months since I resumed training after the 7-month hiatus last year due to this darn torn meniscus. I was missing running so much, so impatient to get back to my initial form... On September 22, 2024 I went to my local track to jog 26.2 miles in 3:42. A month later, in 3:31:47. 2 weeks later, 3:24:52. 1 week after, 3:17:11, then 3:09:24 one week later. And 3:12:37 on December 1st. From there, I looked like I had plateaued with Coros being stuck on a marathon prediction time of 3:10 +/- 30 seconds.

With the new year came the new Grand Prix and its variety of distances, terrains and course profiles so I had to retrain on hills in particular and let go of the focus on the track marathon benchmarking. With the Grand Prix successfully completed I'm now working on speed again and Coros finally noticed, lowering its marathon prediction time to 3:06:57. As I regain self-confidence and rebuilt some leg strength, I felt that I could even beat that. At least give it a try. This Sunday. And at the brand new track!

Cupertino High School got a new synthetic track and football field when our son Max was attending, 20 years ago, in 2005. Last June, work started for a major make over of the football fields. Construction engines were damaging the track so I was hoping they'd redo it too. Which they did indeed, starting on back to school week as a matter of fact. Fast forward 2 months and the track opened this past week! (Picture from last weekend.) What a treat!

I invited my running buddy, Bob, to pace me at the start. Bob ran the first 6 miles with me and put me on the 1'45"-lap rhythm, a 7 min/mile pace orbit. While I was hoping to cover the marathon distance at that pace, my overall goal was to see how long I could hold that pace, either shorter or longer.

In these first 25 laps, we only had one over 1:45, at 1:47, great metronomes we are! ;-)

Ironically, as it was about to show Coros what I was really capable of on the marathon, I had charged my watch the night before but misplaced it afterwards and couldn't find it as I was rushing out early on Sunday morning, duh! Instead, I used my old Garmin Forerunner 310XT which isn't the best for distance accuracy but has a great auto-lap counting mode. Keeping track of the number of distance-certified laps is the best way to get the actual mileage, as a mater of mathematical fact. 42,195 meters divided by 400 equals 105.4875 laps!

After 10 miles (40 laps), I stopped checking lap time at every lap and ran more by feel. I'm stunned to see in the log, afterwards, that lap 77 was the first one in that internal above 1:45, at 1:48. All other laps were in the [-3 , 0] seconds range, showing why doing speed workouts on a track is so important to maintain a stable pace, in a safe environment.

Lap 85 is when I started to show signs of fatigue, losing a few seconds at each lap, for a total of 36 seconds over the last 22 laps.

The glutes and hamstrings were getting stiffer so I decided to stop after the marathon mark, completing 106 laps in 3:04:51 (26.346 miles, 7:01 min/mile pace). Because I used my Garmin watch, Coros hasn't revised it's 3:06:57 prediction, even after I uploaded that activity which shows a distance of 27.52 miles. I will have to do it again with that Coros watch so it believes me...!

It was a lot of good work though, my legs are quite tired on this Sunday evening.

Short of all the Coros metrics (cadence, stride length, hearth rate, ...), I include the long list of lap stats (per the above note, distances and paces being slightly off with this old watch, especially on the track).

The experiment continues... and hard work too!

PAUSATF MUT Grand Prix 2024 Payouts: Finally!

Finally... at a time the recipients might have forgotten about this additional perk of our MUT Grand Prix. At least, they have been nice enough not to bug me every month...

Apologies to these winners, for the delay. And apologies to all the readers who aren't interested in our North California and Nevada trail and ultra running adventures... Although, locally, we are very proud of our MUT Grand Prix and believe there are very few such equivalents across the US and around the world, aligned with a national track & field body at least (quite a few private and commercial organizations run their own series in order to lock their most faithful participants in, like airlines, hotel chains or rental car companies do with their point and loyalty programs).

So... drum roll, the 2024 winners' awards are...

(You can click on the screen shot for a larger view.)

When I took over the Chair role and responsibilities in 2017 from Bill Dodson and the original wizard of our MUT Grand Prix, Hollis Lenderking, paired with scorer extraordinaire, Gary Wang, the determination of these payouts was a bit obscure, or let's say ad hoc. Yet, the total purse was double at $6,000 a year! The only real guideline included in our MUT rules was one of equality between genders.

Mastering Excel and aiming at something more deterministic and open and came up with the following rules and computations.

Rules:

1. Need at least 3 scores to be eligible for any award (plaque, monetary, title); if not, award goes to the next eligible.
2. For one age group, 1 award per 10 age group participants, rounded up (e.g., if 15 participants, 2 awards, if 22, 3).
3. Within each age group, eligible participants are sorted by number of points; their rank determine a potential award amount (see levels in attached table); same potential amount across genders.
4. If the sum of the awards is higher than the allotted pool of money, all awards are pro-rated by the ratio between the allotted pool of money (Pacific Association LDR MUT purse) divided by the sum of the computed/potential awards.
5. I.e., if sum of potential awards = $6,000 and the LDR-attributed pool = $3,000, then all awards are multiplied by a 0.5 ratio.
6. If the sum of the awards is lower than the allotted pool of money, we stick to the potential amounts (levels). (Typical of very low participation, like when we resumed after the pandemic.)
7. Finally, payouts are rounded to whole dollars.

Reference table:

Group ranking	Level
1	$200
2	$150
3	$110
4	$80
5	$60
6	$50
7	$40
8	$30

Et voilà, as we say on familiar grounds on the other side of the pond, forgive my French! ;-)

The checks will be sent at the end of this month by another pair of extraordinary Pacific Association volunteers and executive officers of our association, John and Heike Mansoor.

In a few months, hopefully earlier in the year, we'll send the checks for the 2025 season which just completed with our Ruth Anderson Memorial Runs, 2 weeks ago. 'Till then, we'll all have run many more miles. Hopefully!