Running on Empty

Wow, already 42 miles for the week. Are you tapering off over the next couple of days?

Cal -- I suppose I'm doing a Sasha type taper. I will step it down over the next two days more. Also, most of my the miles have been very easy, which makes me wonder if I'll be able to sustain any decent pace. I'm viewing Park City as more of a training run, and thought your plan for the race looked very sensible, though I don't know if I can sustain that pace.

Thanks for posting the Park City course on the course tool. Are the paces pretty consistent with what you ran last year? It predicts a couple of minutes slower than I was planning and am starting to think that I should be a little more conservative.

Andy, I forgot you didn't run PC last year. I thought the course changes have made the race slower than the course in 2006. The "downhill" is no longer the steady rail to trail portion, but instead is a net downhill through neighborhoods with some undulations. I was way undertrained last year, so my pace from last year is not a very good indication of how well the course tool actually correlates, but I do think it is not as fast as it was in 2006. (I also think the 2006 course was short.)

I think I remember measuring the course 0.2 short in 2006 also.

I've not used the course tool much before, but checking the smooth course feature makes a big difference. For example, by checking the smooth the course out feature, the projected finish time for a target flat of 7:20 pace drops from 3:27:28 to 3:21:14. I wish I had more experience in which is a better projection. Perhaps you know?

I think the results look more reasonable with the smoothing on, but I'm no expert. Unfortunately, I lost my data from last years race so I can't compare any of that either.

Cal -- I lost my data transfer cable to my Garmin last year sometime and have not been able to export any data before it gets overwritten and don't have last years splits either.

The smoothing feature gives me the results that I want so it must be right.

Yeah, why should we run the event when we can just put numbers into the course tool?

As I've been tinkering around (great work productivity today, I know) It seems that without the smoothing feature the splits for miles 14 and 15 are skewed too far.

Thanks for posting that I will go check it out. I didnt see one before so that will really help me out with a good plan. Thanks again Paul.

Paul, which Garmin do you have?

Cal -- I have the Forerunner 301. No upgrade yet for this treadmill runner.

I have a cable from my old 201 that I don't use. (I assume its the same as for the 301).

I could give it to you this weekend if you're interested.

Cal -- Thanks for the kind offer, its certainly worth a try. I used to download my data from outside runs into SportsTracks http://www.zonefivesoftware.com/SportTracks/ which I thought was cool, and as a bonus is free. Do you, Andy, or anyone else download your GPS and heartrate data into such a program?

I don't download any of my data at all. I did for the first couple of months that I had my Garmin but got bored with it and just use the Garmin to measure distance and time.

Andy, I agree, I thought the software that came provided by Garmin was quite limited and got bored with it soon. I prefer the interactive blogging here (finding it more motivating and a higher lever of accountability) but since SportTracks was free and included satelite and weather info I thought it was cool.

Cal -- In thinking about the 201, it has a different interface from the 301, so I don't think the data transfer cables are compatible. The 301 is more like a USB port, it doesn't have to fit in the cradle that the 201 does. Oh, well.

With regards to the course tool, I asked on the discussion forum and Sasha posted this, "Assuming that you used the default 20% crazy grade cutoff, and given that PCM does not have 20% grade anywhere, the smoothed prediction would be more accurate. In fact, for that course if you set it at 10% it will be even better. There is nothing steeper than 10% on that course. Be aware, though, that Course Tool does not take the effects of less oxygen at altitude into consideration. At least not yet."

As usual, Sasha comes through.

Thanks for following up on that Paul. That data looks very reasonable now.

BTW, I downloaded the SportTracks software. I'll check it out and see how it looks the next time I save off my Garmin data.