Rotterdam Marathon 2010

robinph

What time is the rugby on on Saturday?

If we go for a potential meet up on the Saturday in Paddy Murphy's when the rugby is on. People may be there, or may not, and everyone will have different plans as far as what they want to do the day before, and for when they go to meet a pasta dealer to load up on his wares. I'll definitely make an appearance there at some point, so who else is likely to be there that we should be on the look out for?

I think I've now decided that I'm actually going to start out trying for the sub3 pace, so anyone else in that area keep an eye out for the Boards AC vest.

The Paddy Murphy's bar probably makes most sense for the post race beers and carbo replenishment session by the sounds of it as well, so we'll all aim to meet there at, well, when we get there I guess.

No going back to the hotel and not coming back out for beers allowed.

Brianderunner wrote: »

Disaster strikes. Been struck down with sharp pain in my coccyx (tailbone). Was at the munster leinster match last night (standing in the terrace) and felt a little stiff after it. Woke up this morning with severe pain, difficult to walk let alone run, standing up is the hardest. I'm on difene painkillers now, they are helping a bit but the pain is still there. I have 8 days to recover before rotterdam but i'm not optimistic. i reckon i will go over anyway and meet the relatives if i cant run but i cant help thinking its 12 weeks and 430 miles down the drain. Hopefully i will make the startline, fingers crossed.

That sucks soon soon before the race, hopefully it fixes itself though and we don't get anymore people falling by the wayside.

misty floyd

robinph wrote: »

I think I've now decided that I'm actually going to start out trying for the sub3 pace, so anyone else in that area keep an eye out for the Boards AC vest.

Me too. I'm in the D section. I looked at my splits from DCM. My first mile was 8:00 minutes and I didn't really try to slow down. I hope its not as conjested (narrow streets) but it could well be. Not ideal but no need to panic so early.

+1 on the comment about not seeing anyone else getting injured. There have been a good few people from boards that have picked up problems this last week.

KentuckyPete

misty floyd wrote: »

Me too. I'm in the D section. I looked at my splits from DCM. My first mile was 8:00 minutes and I didn't really try to slow down. I hope its not as conjested (narrow streets) but it could well be. Not ideal but no need to panic so early.

+1 on the comment about not seeing anyone else getting injured. There have been a good few people from boards that have picked up problems this last week.

The pace over the first few miles is crucial - very important not to go off too fast - something that can easily happen if you're in too much space. DCM '09 was my first and only marathon to date and I went way too near the front of the first section. Buzzed up on the whole event I tore off happy as larry in heaps of space with the sub-3 merchants and had the 3 hr pacers in sight until nearly the phoenix park. I got into a 7:00 minute mile rythym (even though my aim and training were geared to break 3:30) and had trouble slowing down. 1:35 at the half way sealed my fate and I completely ran out of petrol at mile 19 to record a +15minute split and finish in 3:25.59. Hit my target but felt like death coming in the last 4 miles. If my wife and kids hadn't been in Merrion Sq. I might not have finished.

No wife or kids in Rotterdam so I have to go off slow to keep the fuel conserved.

Different numbers for ye sub-3 targeters obviously but the principle is surely the same - it can be better to be held up for the first mile or two and to speed up into the optimum pace as the race progresses. Is the best idea to get to the front of the D section and look for the 3:00 pacers up ahead?

I'll be looking to the 3:15 pacers TBH (I assume they will be in D section) and will try to hang onto the corresponding 7:27 pace as long as I can. Reckon I'll walk through the feeding stations where I take gels - will try to speed up 200m beforehand and then hopefully keep in touch with the balloons through the feeding process. If that doesn't work out I'll have to fall back on my three months of solo training

A 3:20 finish or under and some element of control over the last 6 miles would be progress for me.

10 miles today - 8 at 7:15 (raceish) pace. 4 recovery tomorrow morning then 3 on Tuesday and 3 on Thursday. Am up the walls at this stage

--amadeus--

I probably won't be online much next week so I'll get teh good luck wishes in early. It's a cracking race you'll all have a ball, best of luck!!

robinph

I think we'll be OK for the crowds if I remember the map right. It was straight for the first couple of km's at least and down a main road so if the roads do become narrower we will al have spread out a good bit by then. Not like in DCM a couple of years ago when I did it and there was a left and immediately a right turn then down a half closed off Holles Street within the first few hundred meters which caused a bit of a traffic jam.

My plan for Sunday will be trying to make sure I take the first mile or two slow and then pick up the pace a bit and just try and hang on for dear life as long as I can. I would put money on me NOT making the 3hrs, but I'm going for it anyway.

misty floyd

Thanks KP

KentuckyPete wrote: »

....and had trouble slowing down. 1:35 at the half way sealed my fate and I completely ran out of petrol at mile 19 to record a +15minute split and finish in 3:25.59. Hit my target but felt like death coming in the last 4 miles.

Thats interesting, I had a very similar experience...around +15min splits. Had a horrible time but I've worked hard to not let this happen again. Lots of big LSR's and 60mile weeks. A much faster pace this time but I think I will have much more endurance. So a controlled start is vital. By the way, what was your weekly mileage like?

Yeah at DCM 09 the first corner must have been 100m from the start and it was a sharp turn.

Anyone ever use or plan on using a pace band? Looking at the garmin for a 2:50m/m pace average is fine but not if the overall distance ends up being 26.5miles. I'm thinking a pace band would help.

--amadeus--

misty floyd wrote: »

Thanks KP



Thats interesting, I had a very similar experience...around +15min splits. Had a horrible time but I've worked hard to not let this happen again. Lots of big LSR's and 60mile weeks. A much faster pace this time but I think I will have much more endurance. So a controlled start is vital. By the way, what was your weekly mileage like?

Yeah at DCM 09 the first corner must have been 100m from the start and it was a sharp turn.

Anyone ever use or plan on using a pace band? Looking at the garmin for a 2:50m/m pace average is fine but not if the overall distance ends up being 26.5miles. I'm thinking a pace band would help.

I think they give out pace bands in teh welcome pack, they're stickers that you can put on your t shirt or race number. Turn off auto lap on your Garmin and manually lap at every KM marker and that way you have accurate averages for distance raced rather than distance run.

village runner

Tanks amadeus. Tis always feic me up. Tool i will use in future.

KentuckyPete

misty floyd wrote: »

... A much faster pace this time but I think I will have much more endurance. So a controlled start is vital. By the way, what was your weekly mileage like?

Because I started training for DCM '09 after tri season I had a six week training schedule and I only ever got to 30 miles or so per week - and that was only on three of the weeks - very much not respecting the distance.

This time it was 30 miles per week through Jan then 45 to 55 miles per week through Feb and March up to the taper starting last Monday. Like you MF, a good few long ones - 4 x15, 3 X18, 2 X20 and 1 x23. Should be at 520 miles overall in the three months by the time we get to the start on Sunday

misty floyd wrote: »

Anyone ever use or plan on using a pace band? Looking at the garmin for a 2:50m/m pace average is fine but not if the overall distance ends up being 26.5miles. I'm thinking a pace band would help.

Don't forget you can make your own pace band here. Very handy because you can set it in miles or KM and you can make one that just shows every 5km (easier to read in the race)

misty floyd

--amadeus-- wrote: »

Turn off auto lap on your Garmin and manually lap at every KM marker and that way you have accurate averages for distance raced rather than distance run.

Thanks Amadeus. I just want to get this right. Turning off auto lap, I won't get the last km time pop up on the screen...ok. So every km marker I hit what button? 'stop' then 'start' again? I'm not getting that

What you are getting at sounds like there is a feature for the user to tell the watch what distance has been run...is that right? sorry.

robinph

The Garmin autolap just creates a lap based on when it thinks you have covered the distance you set. On the 405 the lap button is the lower one so just hit that whenever you see a km marker instead and you then get the time for that lap displayed for a few seconds. Do not hit the stop button until the finish line, learn where the lap one is though so you don't go pressing the wrong one and stopping the watch part way through.

I have mine set to miles as I can't get my head around those funny French measuring systems, but I'll be hitting the lap button at each 5km which is what I seem to remember what someone else said is what they have marked on course. The virtual partner will be set to a mile pace though and the small pace numbers on one of the other screens that it scrolls through will be showing the pace in mile time as well. I'll be printing off the pace times for the 5km splits on a pace band, but might do a couple of different paced ones just so I can try and learn what the different times mean when I start to fail in the second half and can figure out how much I'm loosing by.

Krusty_Clown

What Amadeus is suggesting, is that you turn off auto-lap, and instead you mark the laps (each kilometer) manually, by hitting the lap button. So at every kilometer marker you hit lap, look at the watch, and it will tell you your split for the last kilometer (similar to a stop-watch). Personally, I wouldn't go playing with the watch at all. I reckon it would be more stressful to have to go hit 'lap' on every km marker. Here's what I would do:
On the watch: Big Field=Time, Small fields=Distance & Average pace
On the wrist: Pace band

Any time you pass a km marker, you can use the watch's time field and your pace band to check whether you're on target or not. Distance (to let you know how far you've gone (take with pinch of salt!) and average pace (again, pinch of salt). If your target pace is 6:51, you know that to run sub-3 you need to be averaging at least 6:48. So these two fields are just guidelines. the most important field is the time, combined with the pace band.

KentuckyPete

Krusty_Clown wrote: »

Here's what I would do:
On the watch: Big Field=Time, Small fields=Distance & Average pace
On the wrist: Pace band

Any time you pass a km marker, you can use the watch's time field and your pace band to check whether you're on target or not. Distance (to let you know how far you've gone (take with pinch of salt!) and average pace (again, pinch of salt). If your target pace is 6:51, you know that to run sub-3 you need to be averaging at least 6:48. So these two fields are just guidelines. the most important field is the time, combined with the pace band.

Bang on - that's my plan exactly. I've trained the whole program using miles and the standard settings on the watch so I'll stick with them. I'll use them through the race (especially the pace) and have the 5km splits on my wrist.

misty floyd

That's cool thanks. I can see the advantage in the manual lapping but I think I'd prefare Krusty's suggestion. Time and pace band, there is little room for mistakes with that method and I know I'd forget to hit the lap button and stress myself out trying to look for km markers. It would be easy to work out how many seconds you are up/down at whatever km.

As for 5km splits, they are big gaps. I'm gonna have the 42km's marked on two pace bands which will be covered in see through tape. Well prepared

heffsarmy

Looks like it could be a hot one 20degrees,

http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=zmw:00000.1.06344&hourly=1&yday=100&weekday=Sunday

robinph

Not too keen on that kind of temperature.

Pisco Sour

If come friday they are still predicting 20 degrees then its time to be concerned. Those 7 day forcasts are sketchy at best.

Moycullen1

misty floyd wrote: »

Don't include this or next weeks runs. Average the 8 weeks before this week. How's that looking? .

That's a bit better. Slightly over three runs a week average. Although woke up yesterday with a bit of a head cold so missed last 12 miler. Might do 8 or 9 today at marathon pace and four slow on Thursday with strides to keep legs from going stale as my last run was a slow five last Thursday.

KentuckyPete, that was a serious first marathon and I'm extremely envious of your miles and training for Rotterdam. When I finished Dublin and decided on Rotterdam I was in a great position to give it a serious lash but yet again my propensity to get sick messed up my plans. Anyway maybe it will be nice to run a marathon for fun for a change without too much pressure and to be fair I should be grateful just to be able to do it at all in comparison to the unfortunate individuals struck down by injury.

How is the back Brianderunner. Did it improve any over the last couple of days.

On the temperatures I have never really found wunderground particularly reliable but if you look at weather.com or weather.co.uk they are predicting more or less clear skies. If that happens you can assume we will see 15 or 17 degrees at least. I fish a lot and am always watching short term forecasts. The most reliable site I find is bbc weather who do a 5 day max and they are predicting dark clouds for Saturday with a high of 8.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/162
Something like that would be lovely on Sunday.

KentuckyPete

Yeah I'm in the southeast UK today (quite close to Rotterdam) and it's definitely a lot warmer and sunnier here than in Ireland. The wind is the big factor for me. Most websites are predicting easterly winds of between 10 and 20 km/h

Meanwhile from the studios of NNN ...

*************** NIGGLE NETWORK NEWS LATEST **************

Walking down the stairs yesterday all of a sudden I got a serious twinge in my left hamstring -wtf was that? Stiff and slightly sore ever since. Worked it goodo with the stick last night but it's still there today on the plane coming over. I've a run later on which will tell me a lot. Jaysus :eek:.

*******************************************************

Brianderunner

Moycullen1 wrote: »

How is the back Brianderunner. Did it improve any over the last couple of days.

Its improved by about 50%. I can walk around fine now but its still very sore standing up after sitting. Gonna go to the physio tomorrow and try an easy jog thursday. I havent ran since thursday which is a little worrying, I reckon its 50/50 at the moment to make the start line.

KentuckyPete

Brianderunner wrote: »

Its improved by about 50%. I can walk around fine now but its still very sore standing up after sitting. Gonna go to the physio tomorrow and try an easy jog thursday. I havent ran since thursday which is a little worrying, I reckon its 50/50 at the moment to make the start line.

That's progress Brian. Keep the positive vibes. Still four full days of recovery to go. Don't worry about not running since Thursday. You won't have lost much - if anything.

Moycullen1

Brianderunner wrote: »

Its improved by about 50%. I can walk around fine now but its still very sore standing up after sitting. Gonna go to the physio tomorrow and try an easy jog thursday. I havent ran since thursday which is a little worrying, I reckon its 50/50 at the moment to make the start line.

Fingers Crossed. It certainly is a weird one. Hopefully the physio will give you a few stretches that will give you relief.

KentuckyPete

Forecasts are starting to predict it a bit cooler.

Windfinder has lots of detail for the anoraks. Here's their Rotterdam Airport forecast.

Then there's the ole standard weather.com version here


If Windfinder gets any cooler I'll have to pack the body warmer, tights and gloves. Well, it'll be just like most of the training program then :rolleyes:

robinph

In trying to find where they might put the live timing data up on the web I came across a link to this from their site:

Watch the Rotterdam Marathon

So those left at home, if that are that way inclined, can watch out for you on the web/ TV coverage, or more likely watch a Kenyan for 2 and a bit hours.

robinph

KentuckyPete wrote: »

Forecasts are starting to predict it a bit cooler.

Windfinder has lots of detail for the anoraks. Here's their Rotterdam Airport forecast.

Then there's the ole standard weather.com version here


If Windfinder gets any cooler I'll have to pack the body warmer, tights and gloves. Well, it'll be just like most of the training program then :rolleyes:

Is waves every 4 seconds good or bad for marathon running conditions?

KentuckyPete

robinph wrote: »

Is waves every 4 seconds good or bad for marathon running conditions?

As i say, Windfinder has lots of details for the anoraks

misty floyd

I booked the restaurant that was first on Pug's sisters list: http://www.duetonino.nl/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=16&Itemid=31 for the 5 people I am heading over with for 8 o'clock.

Is it Paddy Murphys we are meeting on the Sunday? Might be hard for me to drag 5 people to wherever it is you guys are meeting up but that would be good.

Hope you lot aren't going nuts.

PS to ring rotterdam numbers from Ireland: 00 + 31 + 10+ Tel #

robinph

misty floyd wrote: »

I booked the restaurant that was first on Pug's sisters list: http://www.duetonino.nl/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=16&Itemid=31 for the 5 people I am heading over with for 8 o'clock.

Is it Paddy Murphys we are meeting on the Sunday? Might be hard for me to drag 5 people to wherever it is you guys are meeting up but that would be good.

Hope you lot aren't going nuts.

PS to ring rotterdam numbers from Ireland: 00 + 31 + 10+ Tel #

Don't be wandering around Rotterdam too far on the Saturday, that restaurant looks to be quite close to the later stages of the course though so you get to scope out what the route looks like and you'll know when your getting nearer the end.

Just got back from a slow few miles myself and it didn't feel great at all. My legs seem to want to get the pain over with now, I think they know what is coming in a couple of days.

In the absence of another better suggestion I think Paddy Murphys is as good a spot as any to arrange for Sunday beers. It's very close to the finish/ expo/ my hotel, and I think we are all staying relatively central to that area anyway.

Moycullen1

I think Paddy Murphys is probably a good idea for both Saturday and Sunday cause there will always be someone to talk to or something to watch what with the rugby, the masters golf and el classico. Given that people have different dinner plans on Saturday some of which clash with the rugby would anyone be thinking of popping in around three pm.

robinph

Moycullen1 wrote: »

I think Paddy Murphys is probably a good idea for both Saturday and Sunday cause there will always be someone to talk to or something to watch what with the rugby, the masters golf and el classico. Given that people have different dinner plans on Saturday some of which clash with the rugby would anyone be thinking of popping in around three pm.

That was my thinking too, apart from the not drinking part on the Saturday, I'm sure we can all cope with hanging around in a pub.

I think I'll only be getting to Rotterdam shortly after 2pm. But after checking in to the hotel and a quick trip to pick up the number, and maybe a wander round the expo which I'd expect to be significantly more interesting than the Dublin one, I''ll then be lost for anything to do. Not got any plans for food myself yet, but could well make use of the hotel for that if everything else is too busy/ too far/ or doesn't interest me, but I'd be up for meeting earlier in the afternoon if I don't find anything else to take my interest.