Charlotte 10 Miler course, official results, and back on the bike

The official Charlotte 10 Miler results are posted here.

Official Time: 1:22:18
Overall Rank: 135/334
Average Time: 1:26:03

Average Male 1:21:17

There was only 1 second difference between my data and the official timing which was pretty rare, but even more unbelievable was how quickly the results were posted. Queen City Timing and Start2Finish had the results up on Saturday afternoon, just a few hours after the race. Back when I used to run a whole bunch (the 90's), I remember that I'd have to wait for a few days before the official results would be posted. I actually saw my results before I left the race though. They had on site printouts taped to the race trailer as soon as I recovered from my sprint to the finish. That's pretty common nowadays, but not so common just 10 years ago.

The Charlotte 10 miler course was perfect. I live in Piper Glen (the part on the map that says Mitchell Pond #6) so, as you can see, this race was in my backyard. Although I've ridden the greenway a bazillion times, I've never run it end to end. This race was the first time. Since living in Charlotte, I've never been in shape enough to finish the whole thing. The greenway is awesome. In addition to ending at Trader Joes (Mmmm), it's just a cool part of nature. Paved sidewalks, marshland, boardwalks, gravel roads, birds, beavers, deer, fox, coyotes, and a sewer treatment facility. Although I wish the last part weren't true, it's a necessity for the citizens of South Charlotte. Anyhow, it made a great backdrop to this race and made it a fast one at that. As you can see from the elevation chart, mile 8.5ish brought on some pain. The race peeps dubbed it heartbreak hill and it was pretty tough late in the race. It was a great venue and overall a great race. I sure hope they keep it around and that I am able to do it again next year.

Carolina Sport Pix also took pictures during the race. I've purchased most of my bike race photos because they turn out pretty good and I look uber cool. When I showed these to the wife, she said "umm don't buy any of those. They are terrible." Say whaaat?

  

In the first photo (probably mile 6.5) I seem to be doing my Edward Scissorhands impression and I don't appear to be too happy (notice the gratuitous cropping of female participants who are passing me). In the finish line photo, it's not quite as bad, but I was really bookin' it. This photo exudes speed. Yes, I said bookin' it.

Isn't this blog about biking? Oh yeah.

Tonight I did my first "real" trainer workout on the bike since last April. It's an oldie but goodie Spinerval workout called Aero Base Builder. The graph below probably means nothing to you but it's significant to me because it's shows that I didn't bonk in 1:27 of moderate pain. 

You want to see nice square waves. During the peak of my training for ORAMM last year, I almost never completed this entire workout....mostly because I went out too hard. Today was day one of training for the Dragon's Tale in New Castle, VA on April 1st. Sometimes I wish it were an April Fools joke, but if I can keep up the momentum, I'm going to give this race an old college try.

Winter Challenge by the Numbers (Geek Content)

I'm a data geek. Yup!  I started recording all my workouts in 2005 with my very first Garmin. It's rare that I go out without it and when I do, I feel a little sense of panic. My Forerunner has catapulted off the bike twice. Once in the woods and once on the road; both times recovered by a tenacious search party. It was blown apart and glued back together in its most recent episode. It just won't die and that is good for me. More data.

Did you watch any of Lance Armstrong's  post race interviews after his 2nd place Panama Ironman 70.3 this weekend? No, well, whether you like Lance or not, you can't argue the fact the he, and those he surrounds himself with, are brilliant planners. He revolutionized the way teams train and prepare for the Tour de France. The guy knows how to train and use data to improve performance. Every second counts. Roll to 1:27 in the video. DATA. Yeah, that's me.







Now for the Winter Challenge data... I mentioned yesterday that the official results were off as compared to my Garmin data. The professionals must have figured it out before I had time to file a protest since the online results were fixed sometime in the wee hours of Monday morning. The corrected official results were:

• 14th place overall (no change)
• 1:03 Run (18th, no change)
• 1:11 Kayak (21st, up from 23rd)
• 0:55 Bike (13th, no change)
• 3:12 Overall

Comparing my efforts from 2009 and 2012:

...and against the winners times:

This data is helpful as I plan for next year. It's obvious that I need to work on paddling. I'm convinced a lot of it is technique related. I feel like I'm horribly inefficient in my paddle stroke and fumbling with hydration was a sore spot with me. If I continue running throughout the year and keep up some bike trainer miles over the holidays, then I think a 3hr finish is within reach next Feb. 

Now for some interesting race data.

• The average age of all the participants was 46. That's a little hard to believe, but really cool. I really hope I can compete in something like this in my 50's. How motivating is that?
• The oldest participant was 60 and the youngest 25.
• AVE RUN TIME = 1:04:49 (1:03 in '09)
• AVE PADDLE TIME = 1:09:49 (1:09 in '09)
• AVE BIKE TIME = 1:03:35 (0:58 in '09)
• AVE OVERALL TIME = 3:20:39 (3:12 in '09)
• The male winner of the 2012 Winter Challenge is the current South Carolina State Marathon record holder. Remember when I said the race was competitive? Here's proof.

Finally, thanks to Google fusion tables, you can see the distribution of participants across NC/SC. This has no real useful value to me other than I think it's kind of neat.