Provo River 1/2 Marathon route

[Jon Allen]

56 mile race?  Adam, maybe coming to the 16 mile trail race will help you more than a 56 mile race...  you should reconsider.

[Josse]

  The last couple of miles might be kind of confusing, so hopefully they have it marked out well, because there are a lot of twists and turns that might confuse people.

Last time he ran it this way I got totally lost and so did alot of other people.  So yes I hope it is clearly marked, because it wasn't last time.

[Tom]

Adam I've tried multiple times to put the course in but I'm having similar problems as you. Extra miles tacked onto the end and the elevations are always either 0 or crazy numbers. So I pretty much gave up on that idea.

I also started recording elevations at each quarter mile with Google Earth but didn't get very far into that as things got busy at work. If I get some free time later this afternoon I'll see if I can finish that up at least through mile 11 and post the data later.

Are we totally OCD or what? We're probably better off just not thinking much about the race or course, leave the watch at home, take of running and have fun.

[Adam R Wende]

I'm totally OCD. No doubting that. I like to think about this stuff to distract me about the race. Whenever I stall for something I try and do something related but not completely necessary. Something is finally working for me. I have a "pretty close" course and it has some elevation info. However, I'm confused by the splits. See below. The mile with a -3.6% elevation has one of the slowest miles (5:58)?! But the one with a grade very similar has a CRAZY fast mile (5:09)...

Distance (miles)   Elevation   Avg. Grade from Last (%)    Split Time    Total Time
0    5971    N/A    N/A    0:00
1    5876    -1.80    6:10    6:10
2    5687    -3.59    5:58    12:09
3    5656    -0.59    5:50    18:00
4    5293    -6.87    5:43    23:43
5    5286    -0.12    5:47    29:31
6    5194    -1.75    5:18    34:49
7    5067    -2.41    5:11    40:01
8    5091    0.46    5:38    45:40
9    4911    -3.41    5:11    50:51
10    4893    -0.34    5:49    56:41
11    4780    -2.15    5:09    1:01:50
12    4844    1.20    5:35    1:07:26
13    4768    -1.44    5:09    1:12:35
13.0828    4761    -1.65    0:24    1:13:00

[Michelle Lowry]

Those splits don't look like good targets.  I would just take the average split you want (5:34) and subtract 15 seconds for the first 4 miles (assuming we have four miles in south fork canyon), add 10 seconds for the mile coming out of the canyon  (mile 5 - I am assuming that is the spot on the highway before where I wussed out on the tempo, so it is somewhat uphill), try to hit the average splits mile 6-10, then try to hit 10 seconds over for the rest.  That should be just about right.  The last three miles will be tough because our legs will be tired and the miles are flat and it sounds like we'll have lots of turns in the last two miles.  Should be fun!

[Tom]

Dang Adam your numbers look nothing like the quarter mile elevations I get from google earth. I'll post mine for comparison, but I imagine nothing beats just running by feel and using a little common sense. Actually my real reason for posting these is just to show Adam I'm more OCD than he is.

Mile     0      .25     .50     75
0     5834   5774   5713   5671
(net drop -212 from start to mile 1)
1     5622   5630   5584   5522
(-123)
2     5499   5468   5434   5420
(-97)
3     5402   5373   5295   5234
(-205)
4     5197   5193   5191   5193
(-8)
5     5189   5194   5250   5200
(-1)
6     5188   5123   5116   5065
(-153)
7     5035   5006   4992   4964
(-93)
8     4942   4921   4917   4908
(-71)
9     4871   4851   4845   4839
(-46)
10   4825   4807   4790   4790
(-45)
11   4780

I don't know the course after this point but I'm assuming it's mostly flat from here on out.

[Sasha Pachev]

For the benefit of the potentially lost souls who might stray on the "loopy" section, here is the map of the course:

http://fastrunningblog.com/course.php?course_id=271&course_name=Provo+River+Half+2008

I posted some details on the updates I made to the Course Tool in my blog as well:

http://sasha.fastrunningblog.com/blog-A-M-Talked-to-Curt-last-night-and-reali/08-08-2008.html

[adam]

That sounds about right.

You'll really fly down the first four miles. The next will still be downhill but may be a little bumpy. Once you leave the canyon your momentum should be way up- then the game is trying to hold on to it the gradual down/flat last three miles.

I would do my best to run hard enough effort through the first ten to still have the mind ready to attack the last three miles (which with the turns and such will probably be a time sucker).

[Adam R Wende]

Sasha, Thank you for saving Tom and I from falling into a downward spiral of increasingly pointless posts. 

[Tom]

Yes Sasha thanks a bunch!

Although I'm still a bit baffled by the disparity in some of the elevation readings between all the maps/data floating around.

Looking forward to a jolly good time!