Nike Run Prague 2011 extremely hot PR!

First year of the Nike Run Prague seemed to be extremely successful up until 35 people having to be taken care of by ambulances and transported to hospitals due to extremely warm weather. 10 km is way easier than half-marathon and Nike did great job with PR having to close the sign ups before the official date with almost seven thousand people signed in. According to athletic rules, you don't have to have refreshments on the 10 km course, but yet this was more of happening than professional athletic competition. This is all I am gonna say about this topic since there are many other websites full of it and I am just so overwhelmed, happy and excited about how my race went, that I don't want to spent any more dark thoughts about this race. Warning: I am super excited with the race, so this post is gonna be long. Get a cup of tea/coffee and set yourself up in comfortable position :)

How was it? My last hard workout was on Wednesday, 3x 1.87 miles (3 km) at 8:26 min/mile (5:15 min/km), Thursday off (had delicious dinner with friend instead, yum!) and Friday easy warm up, dynamic stretches, 1 km at race pace (around 7:50 min/mile = 4:52 min/km). Got a good night sleep, woke up around 8 am on Saturday with 9 hours of sleep "under my belt". Got the traditional cottage cheese - fruits - almond butter breakfast and was waiting for my "sister" (= best friend) to arrive with another friend of ours. Friday night I hesitated about taking my hydration belt or not, but walking the dog in the morning, I definitely decided for yes, because the forecast did not lie and it was supposed to get close to 30 degrees Celsius (= 86 degrees Fahrenheit).

The girls arrived, I made pasta with chicken breast, zucchini and bit of parmesan for lunch (that seems to be becoming our traditional pre-race lunch, since we had the with my sis before the half-marathon in Olomouc). I added another portion of cottage - peach - almond butter, got a nice little espresso for a pre-race caffein shot and we were ready to go. Luckily my mom offered to drive us to the start, thank you mom!!! The area was already crowded and impossible to park anywhere near. We managed to come exactly on time to meet up with Jitka, Martina and Leona from the bloggosphere and the online friends got real. One of the sweetest moments of the race! Jitka's husband Ondra managed to recognize me in the crowed (Ok not that difficult with hot pink compression socks and running skirt I admit :) ).

Photo by Jitka Sečková

Photo by Jitka Sečková

Photo by Jitka Sečková

Very cool detail was the wall of the Žluté lázně - start/finish area that was covered with all the mottos racers chose for their t-shirts together with numbers. Getting photo with yours was almost a must:

Photo by Jitka Sečková

The following sequence was pretty quick ... get the gear (= compression socks, fuel belt, GU gel) ready and drop off the bags, go to the toilet, get my dynamic stretches done (lot of weird looks here), carnitine 30 minutes before the start, GU gel (love chocolate outrage taste!!! ... so much better than the stuff you can get here in Czech Republic). Adjusted the t-shirts for the extreme heat (eg. rollin the sleeves and the bottom part under the number). Then bit of panic to get to see The Coach who was obliged to stay most of the time with other clients and I was off to go to the start. We split with the sis who stayed with Lenka and I was "boxing" my way towards the first rows. I got pretty close to the starting line as you might see from the photos. I guess like 15-20th row. And off we went for the race.

I had the usual problem ... felt so good and went out way too fast. At the beginning my pace was just slightly above 7:00 min/mile (4:20 min/km), I managed to get it up to around 7:30 min/mile (4:39 min/km) but it was a fight :) First mile 7:31, enough said. I felt really great, noticed that there ain't many women around in the crowed so I virtually couldn't pace myself with anybody, since the guys didn't like me running next to them. So they either overpassed me, or I overpassed them :D Somewhere around 3-4th km I got overpassed by Radek from Behej.com, he obviously didn't fight for through the crowd at the starting line ... he went fast ahead. Little did I know how important was he to become for my race. Pretty exciting part of the race as I saw my mom cheering just few seconds after. I was now settled at comfortable 7:38 min/mile (4:45 min/km) pace that I have previewed as the "fast" pace for the second half of the race, if I am able to speed up.

OK, so it is one thing to plan how you will do negative splits, starting somewhere around 7:50 min/mile and perhaps speeding up towards 7:38 in the last few km. Another thing is the reality. I have to say that I felt incredibly strong for the first 6-7 km. It was good that around 3rd/4th km there started to be some shades from time to time. I concentrated on good breathing, especially breathing out and "recovering" my legs while breathing out. I was also lucky about my hydration. Had 8 oz (240 ml) bottle of Isostar and same with water, was sipping on the Isostar while using the plain water to cool down my head and neck. Somewhere around the middle of the race there was a chronometer showin 25 minutes, that puzzled me out a lot, since I was thinking, I was going for faster than 50 minutes, but then just 200 m after, there was the 6 km mark. I regained my confidence. Not for long though.

Left turn up to the Wenceslas square. It wasn't really a hill, but still a bit yes. There, somewhere before the 7th km mark I started to realize, that this wasn't gonna be all the way easy feeling strong race. On the other hand, I must have known, the heat was going to kick in sooner or later after the experience with last few miles of my first half-marathon in the New York City. OK, 3 km to go, I have to cope with this, I have been training pretty hard and I wasn't "kickin' ass" the first 7 km at pretty cool pace in order to give up at the last portion of the race! I tried to "recover" as much as I could in the shades as I had the "advantage" of knowing the course perfectly, so knowing that the last almost 3 km were basically pure sun.

Hitting the 8th km mark and crisis surrounded by guys only ...

Felt little bit better until the 8th km where we had to re-gain the street level from the riverbank promenade where we ran in order not to interfere with traffic that much. That was actually a great part, because one could feel slightly cooler air coming from the river. But climbing up that short little hill, I felt desperate. And there, like an angel Radek who overpassed me around 3-4th km was literarily waiting for me. He had a crisis too and being an super experienced racer, he pulled me up to the finish line. I got behind him and he tried to speed me up. The only words I was capable of were "I can't!". And he kept on insisting and step by step we were getting closer to the finish. Radek advised me to try to do slightly longer steps, that helped a lot as well. 

There we were coming, I knew we had less than 1 km to go, but also knew that the route wasn't perfect 10 km, but more like 10.3 km or something. Radek cheered me up by saying that we can almost see the finish gate. And having my 164 cm of "height", I still couldn't see it for pretty long time. Damn, that upset me, because I realized that from the point of seeing the gate, there were still few hundred meters to go. And there it was, Radek told me "It's last 400 m, come on." and sped of with incredible acceleration. How glad I was for my weekly sessions with The Coach, telling myself, that I know I am able to do pretty fast 400 m even on tired legs, so I set off for my finish. According to my splits, I did the last 640 m in little less than 3 minutes - about 7:06 min/mile (4:25 min/km). In the finish, my Garmin said 49:04. Originally, I was aiming for time closer to 45 minutes, but not in the crazy heat on direct Sun. I was so so happy and over excited! OK, I was happy after Radek walked me for few more meters not letting me collapse. I put myself together and called mom and dad.

When I realized that my HR is coming towards 190 BPM I stopped watching it ...
Avg. HR: 185, max. HR: 194 ... crazy hot day!

Met my friends who came to cheer up without noticing. Thank you Katarínka and David!!! That was great surprise, although my perception was bit blurred, because David cheered few hundred meters from finish and I thought it was like 2 km before finish :) But who cares, thank you for the support! I started to worry about my sis as I saw people virtually collapsing all the way around. Texted her, since I knew she was listening to mp3 on her phone, so did not want to interrupt in case she was running. Was on the phone with mom when she called, immediately called back and only got the words "I'm sick just after the finish next to the red wall." So we fought through the crowds going in the opposite direction towards the finish and there she was lying in the shade. I was so happy that sis wasn't pale and green as some of the others, managed to get her some water, legs up for a while and she was back to her great herself with awesome time of 55:54.4. I was so proud and so relieved seeing she is great. It was me anyway who set all this up. In few more hours, sis was already planning how she needs to train more to run with me next time. She is the best!

We went in the area of Žluté lázně to meet with The Coach. I guess he was happy with my result, he than explained that he is used to train mainly guys, so for a guy my time wasn't that great, but for a crazy hot pink gal, not bad at all (or that is how I interpret it anyway). The rest of the day went great, we chilled on the artificial beach in Žluté lázně, drank some non-alcoholic beers, ate grilled chicken. Talked about running and life. Met up with Jitka and Ondra once again, got some photos with the "We Run Prague" sign. Watched some freestyle dancing, did not win Fiat cabrio in the drawing and had a great walk half of the way home for recovery. I guess this was the best day of this summer so far! 

Happy finisher's face ... Yeah, I kicked some ass today and I know it! :D 

The day went even better when we finally hit my place around 9:30 pm, doing some late night cottage cheese - fruits - almond butter snack (I hope I made girls addicted the same way I am!). We started checking out the online results, we already knew that sis did 1541th overall and I did 544th overall (out of 5 208 finishers), but what a pleasant surprise, when we realized that sis was 193rd and I was 47th among the women!!! No wonder I did not see many girls around :) My official time 49:04.4, that is almost one and half minutes faster than the 10 km in July. And I forgot that this 10 km was actually like 10.3 km, so I was even faster on my 10 K! Yay! The crazy hard work with The Coach pays off, no stopping now! Did I mention that I did not think / feel the right ankle ligament for a single moment in the race and after finishing? Thank you for reading up here, I am grateful for the beautiful race and congratulations to all the participants! Share your results with me in the comments section. How did you like/feel the race?

Photo by Radek Narovec

Photo by Radek Narovec

After-race fueling :)

Photo by Radek Narovec

Photo by Jitka Sečková

Check out the photo post of Nike Run Prague 2011.