Suwanee Half Marathon Brief
Asheville Marathon Prep (Ep 6)
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Recently, I raced my first tune up race. Not only is this my first tune up race for the Asheville Marathon, but it’s also my first time doing a tune up race in general.
Today I want to briefly talk about tune up races, what they are, and why they are important. Then I’ll go over the tune up race I did and how it went.
Let’s jump in!
What is a tune up race?
The term “tune up race” actually fits the name really well because that is the goal: to tune up your race day engine.
It is a chance to put everything to the test in a test that’s not important. The tune up race might go well, or it might go poorly. It is a chance to learn about where your fitness really is and figure out if there are things you need to tune up on before your goal race.
That’s the theory of it all.
In practice, a tune up race is a race at a shorter distance than your goal race, but at a faster pace. So a marathon tune up race could be a 5K or 10K or in my case, a half marathon. A good tune up for a 10K goal race would be a 5K. You get the idea.
The only caveat I’ve heard of is if your goal race is a 5K, you could use a 10K as your tune up race. The reason this works is that when you race a 5K, you are trading out distance for intensity. You are probably going to try to hold onto a pace you have no idea you can hold onto. The distance isn’t scary, but the pace is.
So by doing a 10K (double distance) at slightly slower speeds, it can be a better tune up than racing say a mile at an even faster than 5K pace and potentially hurting yourself or testing a totally different type of fitness that doesn’t tell you anything.
Why do a tune up race?
Like I said before, a tune up race, gives you the ability to tune things up. This goes beyond just testing your fitness too!
First, it gives you the ability to test out carb loading, what your nutrition strategy on race morning looks like, taking gels on race day, taking hydration on race day, testing the clothes and shoes you are going to race in. Basically, it’s like a dry run for race day.
A lot of these things like nutrition should be practiced during training too. Especially gels and hydration. But now they really get to be put to the test during an actual race condition. An all out effort.
Second, it gives you an opportunity to test out racing. Race day often comes with a certain amount of race day jitters and nerves. Where to park, making sure your can go to the bathroom, going through a warmup, finding the start line or corral, getting the watch setup, headphones charged, etc etc. All these things add up to nerves. As an aside, those nerves don’t help with the bathroom thing either, haha!
But doing a tune up race, helps you go through the motions of the race without it being a goal race you care about.
Third, it gives you a good idea of where your fitness is at. If you are trying to PR (setting a Personal Record) in the marathon, then that typically means you will probably end up PRing in your half marathon tune up race. It’s not necessary or guaranteed, and you definitely don’t want to destroy your body in a tune up race either. In fact, you want to go into the race thinking of it as just another workout.
And just like other workouts, it’s a chance to go all in and push your limits like you will on marathon day. This helps you find gaps in your fitness and what you may need to put extra emphasis on over your remaining weeks of training.
Finally, a tune up race gives you confidence and a huge psychological boost. Because if you nail the race, you know you are on the right track for your goal race.
Suwanee Half Marathon
Which leads us to my first tune up race: the Suwanee Half Marathon.
Why this race?
Well, the first thing we looked for in a race was a half marathon 4 weeks out from my marathon. My training plan called for a tune up race around then. I narrowed the search for races near our house, near my family, or near Taylor’s family. That way we didn’t have to pay for a hotel anywhere, haha!
We found this one near my family in Georgia and since they had a 5K, Taylor, my sister, and her family joined in too!
3 Days Out
This race happened to fall on Valentine’s weekend so we decided to start the trip early on Thursday, February 13th and spend a night in Greenville, SC.
A wonderful town with a beautiful river, tons of good food, and a Grand Bohemian hotel. This is the same hotel “collection” (I guess you call it) that we stayed in for our honeymoon in Asheville. So it’s sentimental.
We chose Thursday because on Valentine’s day the room rate was 5x what it was on Thursday, haha!
We also got to stuff ourselves at the Melting Pot, which is always a good time!
Day Before
The day before the race I wanted to really practice my carb loading. I targeted 700g of carbs and got pretty close. I think I ended the day around 650g. It was really tough.
I had bananas, oranges, fruit juice, pancakes, maple syrup, sour dough bread with honey, gnocchi pasta, pizza, and probably more I can’t remember right now.
It was a ton of food.
And so that was basically the whole day. It was raining that day off and on and the forecast for the race was not looking so hot.
Other than a giant eating contest with myself, I also got in a shakeout run with some strides to loosen up and open up my stride a little. And we went to pick up our bibs for the race! It wasn’t a huge race (around 300 total runners across the 5K, 10K, and Half Marathon) so they didn’t have a true expo. Just in and out.
And then the rest of the day was really just eating and watching TV, movies, and relaxing on a nice rainy day.
Honestly, it was a great day full of good rest!
Race Day
Race day kicked off with the alarm at 4:45am.
My research has told me that getting some carbs in 2-3 hours before your race starts is ideal so your body has time to process those carbs. The carb load the day before loads you up, but then after sleeping you just want to top things off.
My race was set to start at 7:30, so I figured 4:45am and having food in my stomach by 5am would fit the bill.
As wild as that wake up time sounds, the crazier part is I woke up to some massive thunderstorms. Lightning, crazy wind gusts, pouring rain, the whole works.
Turns out there was a tornado going through Georgia that morning!
We even lost power for a solid 30 minutes to an hour.
I went into this race with a goal of 1:25 for the half. I thought maybe I could really push in the end and go under that too. That pace is around my threshold/tempo pace, which I’ve done in several big workouts and have held for up to 7 miles before. If I hit that goal then that would prove my fitness is ready for a sub 3 hour marathon and give me a lot of confidence going into the last few weeks of training.
The thunder, wind, and lightning was not helping with my confidence in this goal.
However, lots of prayers the day before and the morning of were answered. God let the storm up around 7am. It was a dreary day with some wind gusts, but other than that the weather was perfect. Honestly, for a good race you don’t want it to be sunny and warm. You want good cloud coverage and a cool crispness in the air. Which is what we got!
God knew the weather would let up, but the race coordinators did not. When I woke up Taylor at 5:45am she quickly checked her phone to see that 2 minutes before I woke her up, they sent an email and postponed the race an hour. Which meant she could roll over and sleep for another hour, haha!
I tried to rest some more, make sure my hydration and nutrition was still dialed, and just waited.
My nutrition plan that morning was simple:
5am - 1 scoop of G1M sport (a carbohydrate drink mix) and 2 masa flour pancakes with maple syrup. This gets us to around 100g of carbs.
6am - 1 banana or 27g of carbs
7am and onward - sipping on electrolytes and G1M sport mix. I carried this mix with me on course too.
8am - 1 Go Gel, which has like 24g of carbs
When we arrived to the race, parking was a breeze and I quickly went through my warmup routine. This ended up being a great routine which I think I’ll keep for the marathon:
I jogged a mile to warm things up. Then I did some of those drills you see crazy people and track runners do…we’re talking like full on skipping, swinging legs, etc. Then to end I did some strides to open things up and get my legs a sense of running fast.
I broke a sweat and was warm and ready to go!
The race started at 8:30am sharp. They put all of the runners together no matter distance because of the delay. I will be honest, I thought going into this race I might have a decent shot at a podium so I got up front and toed and start line. Which felt cool.
The “gun” went off. It actually was just a guy counting down with a megaphone. And we took off.
I have a bad habit (like most runners) of going out too hot and burning up. After the first 100m or so there was just one kid in front me of, probably about 16 years old. I thought to myself, “he’s going way too fast and so am I”.
I looked down and we were in fact clocking around a 5:45 min/mile pace, so I slowed it way down to my goal pace of around 6:30 min/mile. When I did this 3 or 4 runners passed me, but I knew I would catch them later…or so I thought.
The first mile went by quickly as they always do. I didn’t know it at the time but this was my 1 and only mile on pace: 6:25.
When I went into the race, I thought I’d practice a negative split strategy. This is when you set out a little slower than race pace for the first half, and then speed up and finish stronger than race pace for the second half.
This meant my actual goal for the first 7 miles was between 6:30-6:40. I ended up resting in around 6:40, but with a couple early hills my second mile was off and hit around 6:48.
Thus, the discouragement started to trickle in. That pace is 2 seconds faster than my goal marathon pace. Which isn’t much. I was starting to get worried, but I knew if I just settled in and relaxed the paces would catch up.
My effort was there, I have run these paces enough to know what the effort feels like. I just needed to settle in. After the initial 2 miles, we were on a pretty long and straight road for maybe the next 2 miles.
My 3rd mile did get closer to the goal of around 6:42 so things were beginning to click. But then we entered this park.
And in the park we had some massive feeling hills. They weren’t terribly long, but I swear they felt like at least a 10% grade. We may live in the mountains, but I was not expecting steep hills on this race down in Georgia.
That’s when I really felt the pace drop all the way to finishing that 4th mile in 6:54. Then 6:57 for 5th mile.
In the 6th mile before the turnaround (it was an out and back course because the full looped course got flooded), I pushed a bit and took a caffeinated gel. I was able to finish that 6th mile in 6:50. Which sounds great, but it was still discouraging because that is my marathon goal pace.
I was 20 seconds off my half marathon goal pace.
And from there, things got worse. That was my last mile in under 7 minutes.
Part of that was those steep hills on the way back out again. But I told myself I just needed to make it through the hills, don’t worry about pace, and settle in on the straighter flatter section for the last 5K on the way back.
And while that did happen, the pacing did not get me back to goal pace. I averaged 7:07 for the final 5K, which was better than an average of 7:24 for the 3 miles of hills on the way out of the park.
I did push the final 0.1 miles and hit goal pace for the finish line!
All in all, I crossed the finish line in 1:32, averaging a 7:02 min/mile pace. It was a strong effort and I actually got 1st place in my age group! I got 7th overall!
I know it sounds vain to be upset about this time, but it was kind of a bummer. I was 7 minutes slower than my goal. A goal I was actually pretty confident in. In fact, that’s not even my fastest half marathon. In the Asheville marathon last year, I finished the first half in 1:29, and then went on to run another half marathon after that. So it was a bit disappointing I couldn’t at least get under 1:29.
In fact, if I had hit my goal pace and ran 1:25 I actually would have gotten 2nd place overall in the race.
Where this leaves me for Asheville
Well, like I said a tune up race does a few things:
Tests nutrition
Tests racing prep
Tests fitness
Gains confidence
I achieved 3 of those 4 things. I actually lost a lot of confidence, but I’m trying to get it back. I have another week of heavy training before I begin the taper.
I did not pass my fitness test in this race, but I did pass the effort test. The effort was there, but the pace was not. I’m left with the big question of why?
Was my fitness not where I thought it was? Am I not training enough on hills? I was sick a couple of weeks ago and haven’t been able to keep up paces since then. Maybe there is still some fatigue going on there?
I’m not sure what it is, but one thing is for sure. This next few weeks of training I need to dial in, give it my all, and probably train more of my faster paced stuff on hills.
During this prep I’ve done a lot of tempo and track workouts on an actual track. Not on sidewalks with ups and downs. I think the hills in this race took more out of me than I thought. Even though I do all my moderate paced workouts with some massive hills. But I never try and hold faster paces, and perhaps that is a key ingredient I missed in training.
My nutrition and race prep test passed with flying colors, though! Throughout training, I’ve been trying to stick to a strict animal based diet and stick to consuming enough carbs (500g a day). I’m not perfect at this and there is a whole blog coming out soon about my diet, so look out for that next week!
But in my carb load, I definitely went off diet a little. I consumed more bread and pasta than normal, but I wanted to see how they would do. And I think they did great! I didn’t feel any digestion issues during the race.
I had a slight stomach ache towards the end I think due to pushing on the hills, but I was able to settle in and that went away. In the actual marathon, I will be consuming more gels than on this race, but I think this gave me confidence in that strategy. I also think mixing both my carbohydrate G1M sport drink AND electrolytes made my on course drink a little too intense. It never really tasted refreshing and I didn’t want to drink it in the last 5K.
Lastly, like I said before, my warmup went great and I felt like I was ready for the race. I didn’t have any issues with the timing of getting up, getting there with enough time to warmup, go to the bathroom, or anything like that.
That will help with the race jitters on marathon day!
So in conclusion, this race was not a confidence boost. It was a discouragement. But it was a learning opportunity. It wasn’t the goal race and it showed me what I need to work on.
It was also a good reminder that every race, good or bad, is part of the journey. Just like all of life. In life we face many trials, some more difficult than others. But God tells us that we should face all trials with joy because they will build endurance, proven character, and hope.
I’m hoping my fitness can catch back up to where we were before getting sick and I can get things dialed in for Asheville just 4 weeks away (at the time of me writing this).
Make sure to tune in tomorrow for my next episode on YouTube!
Until next time, run with joy!