A Sunday Race Pace Test
With three weeks to go until the 2024 BMO Vancouver Half Marathon, it was time to do a good race pace test to see where I am at. My Garmin watch would have me believe that about a 1:40:00 half marathon is possible, but my Stryd power meter says I should aim for a 1:51:00.
I figured reality is closer to the Garmin prediction than the Stryd one, mostly because I don't have a hard effort over a long run for teh Stryd algorithm to use. Today was the day to fix that.
The plan was to run about 22km with a 5km warmup to get to the Martin Goodman Trail (MGT) and away from any traffic lights or stops. I set out with the rest of the usual Sunday group in a downpour. By the time we got to the 5km mark, I was ready to just skip the race pace portion, if I'm honest.
KM Pace
1 4:17/km (affected by GPS interference downtown)
2 6:13/km (affected by GPS interference downtown)
3 5:38/km
4 5:36/km
5 5:59/km
The first km of the race pace portion, I ran what I thought was a comfortable pace. When the split came up as 5:01/km for the sixth kilometre, I was a bit surprised. I decided to keep that pace up and see how far I got before things got tough.
The next four kilometres were steady with the pace coming down just a bit, although the tail end of kilometre 6 and the start of 7 included the Legion Hill. Kilometre 10 included the uphill to the Humber Bridge where we stopped for about a minute to wait for the group to bunch up.
KM Pace
6 5:01/km
7 4:56/km
8 4:54/km
9 4:53/km
10 5:02/km
I wasn't really interested in standing around, so I set back off solo from here and started running eastbound back towards downtown. Kilometre 11 included the downhill for the Humber Bridge and kilometre 13 had the uphill at Legion Hill again.
KM Pace
11 4:51/km
12 5:00/km
13 5:07/km
14 4:59/km
15 5:00/km
Suffice to say, I was pretty pleased at this point. I had five kilometres of race pace to run, and I was feeling pretty good. There was a bit of fatigue, but I was also 15km into a pretty tough run at a strong pace. I held the pace through kilometres 16 and 17 (which included a short traffic light stop at Bathurst). Kilometre 18 has a touch of uphill with a bit of downhill over a bridge and then it's a straight shot for 19 and 20. I was pushing it a bit here, like I would at the end of the race to see if I had that little bit more to give.
KM Pace
16 4:58/km
17 5:01/km
18 4:55/km
19 4:48/km
20 4:49/km
At 20km, I shut it down and walked for a few hundred metres through some muddy, flooded sections of the MGT at Parliament. Once I got back across Lakeshore at Cherry St., I started the run again and tossed a 5:05 kilometre in for good measure. That was not the cooldown I had planned! Oh well.
KM Pace
21 6:38/km
22 5:05/km
All in all, that was a great run and a really good race pace effort. Stryd took that run and recalculated my Critical Power to 281w (up 10w). My predicted finish time for BMO Vancouver Half Marathon came down to 1:40:39 which I think is probably doable given the nature of the course.
The Strava entry for the run: https://www.strava.com/activities/11181028860