Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Napa Valley Marathon 2009 data

I charted and graphed my mile splits to get a sense for the race. The data is a little hard to see in this format, but what you are looking at is as follows:

Red columns are my mile splits
Green Line is my overall adjusted pace trend (i.e. what direction was my overall pace trending at each mile)
Blue Line is cumulative time
X-axis shows miles




Final Time = 3:36:47


Pace: 8:15





For comparison I charted my 2000 Silicon Valley Marathon data.






Final Time: 3:24:32

Pace: 7:48


Besides the obvious pace difference, I think I ran the 2000 race a bit more evenly, but that makes sense since the course was dead flat whereas Napa was bumpt at the end after downhills in the beginning. At Napa I didn't need to stop at all, but I did walk about 20 seconds through the last 3 water stops, so that affects the pace at the end.


One last chart. This one compares my average pace across three different races, SF 2000 (red)(notice the big drop-off at the end) SVM 2000 (green), and Napa 2009 (blue):

2 comments:

  1. Fantastic job! We clearly weren't running in the same pace groups, LOL, but it was a tough day out there for everyone.

    I have a buddy that was out there with your crowd he was trying to break 3 hours but came in at 3:00:53. I should hook you guys up!

    I hear you about the cut off at Napa. I understood that last year when I ran my first there and I spent the winter doing speed work ot make sure I could finish in time.

    I just thought with the conditons and the number of no shows they could give the late runners medals. Plus they opened the Silverado trail to traffic (BOTH lanes!!) at 8:30 in the morning. I thought that was ridiculous. Cars were flying by us in the pouring rain when there was often no bike lane and barely a shoulder to run in.

    I guarantee you as a Team in training alumni the TNT'ers that came in after 6 hours got medals so they should have given the cute little lady in the pink shower cap one. They could have done it one the sly. I know they can't encourage slower runners to come to Napa since it is such a small race, but still...

    Anyhoo.. I have hijacked your blog enough. I jut wanted to say "hi" and let you know that I appreciate your comment! Happy running! Any chance you are doing Big Sur? I will be there!

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  2. Hey I'm honored you dropped in :) You are kind of a celebrity in my house.
    Nice job on #7, my wife completely agrees with you by the way. I even dropped the 'c'mon now, they have cut-offs in ironman, why not Napa." The 3 hour guys, well I don't know much about them.

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