2013 Winterman Half Marathon Post-Race Report

So yesterday was the big race over in Ottawa - the Winterman Half Marathon. The day started at 5:15 in the morning with a big yawn, after sleeping for a total of about 15min the night before - maybe pre-race nerves, maybe not being at home. I had my normal breakfast - muesli with banana and fruit (blueberries, rasberries, etc.) and we were out the door to walk to the start by 7. I layered up pretty well, but still at -28 (and by the river) it's impossible to have enough layers on while still having mobility in the upper body. So i figured it would be better the under-dress than over - my toes and hands objected to this plan the whole way over - even my trusty ipod nano stopped working on the way over - i figure the battery froze (luckily before the race i was able to reset it)

Anyways enough back-drop, standing at the line, sizing up my competition, I was nervous but had the confidence of knowing that no one in the total of 1500 competitors (not all in the half some in full, and 10k/5k) had trained harder than me. Therefore, I felt I was going to take my hamstring exploding for someone to challenge me. Boom! An artillery cannon sounded the start of the race. I flew out of the start - mostly startled from the sound. Some people my age practically went into an all out sprint from the start and I stayed calm and knew they wouldn't keep that. After about 300m I was up at the front with 2 other guys. I caught up to the first, he was in the 5k, then the leader he was in the 10k - so leading out of the gate, good start. After another minute or so my lungs started to complain about the cold, but I pushed on. I won't detail every foot strike along the route, but basically 1 lap went, I was leading, second lap still leading, 3rd lap I saw my chasers on the other side of the road (its a 5.247km out and back loop) no too far back maybe 30 seconds. On the 4th and final lap they were more than 4 minutes back and with 3k to go or so I knew it would take a catastrophe for me to lose this race. However, I didn't want to start celebrating because I didn't know what these guys were capable of - maybe they were saving for finale - i didn't know, so I kept my pace high and flew into the finish for my first career victory.

Here's the breakdown of the laps and the data from my garmin.
Lap 1 - 18:52, Lap 2 - 19:15 (lost about 30 seconds on this lap after going the wrong way for a bit), Lap 3 - 19:03 , Lap 4 - 18:52.  Also along the route a section of the course narrowed to a sidewalk so for lap 2,3,4 trying to pass the 10ks and 5ks along the sidewalk added some time overall. The official time was 1:16:00 but i figure with the delays and mistake on my part was easily sub 1:15.
http://connect.garmin.com:80/activity/embed/274874821

Just copy the link and insert into browser (in the top right corner click view in metric)

One more thing I wanted to add into this long post was a quick review on my race shoes - the Adidas Adios 1.0. I wore the Adidas Adios 2.0 in the 2012 Scotiabank Marathon, and wore them for basically all my long runs leading up to this race. I got the 1.0 in January for about 60$ (as they are a few years ago's model). I liked the 2.0 so much but 160$ + tax is too much for a racing flat. 60$ sounded pretty good to me and I figured they would be similar to 2.0 (many reviews have said they like the 1.0 better than the 2.0). When I bought them I intended on wearing them for the 2 tempo runs leading up to the winterman just to break them in, the race itself, the around the bay 30k in march, and a full marathon in may.

In terms of performance, the shoes are great. They are feathery light, tight close to foot fit which I really like in a racing shoe, and extremely stiff. As much as I like shoes like the Saucony kinvaras and brooks pure connect which have a soft feel, for racing I like a shoe that is stiff since it pushes back on you at toe-off (acting like a spring). Also, I love their colour - and as much as this sounds fruity - I think it's very beneficial during a run to look down at your shoes or at the reflection on a window and say, "Damn I look good."

After the race i looked at the bottoms of the shoes, and they were beat to shreds. The soles were actually destroyed, and pieces from the sticky rubber sole had fallen completely off. I mean this is ridiculous, I literally ran only 48km on these shoes with the race and the two tempos before it, and the shoe is falling apart? I'm going to try to see if I can return them, or get some sort of discount on my next pair because a shoe should not break apart after less than 50k. I mean for the Adios 2.0, i put atleast 500-600km on them and not a single piece of the sole has broken off - not even the little nubs of rubber seen in the picture on the right. So basically in terms of durability these shoes get a 0 out of 10. If you have the money definitely go with the 2.0 over the original, if not for racing flat similar to the 2.0 I would give something like the Asics Hyperspeed 4 or 5 a try.

Heres a look at the bottom of my shoes, look at the toe and the two missing nodules: