Tuesday, October 03, 2006

 

A hard run

Due to scheduling issues I did last week's long run on saturday, at home. This was a 14 miler, and I did it on the bike trail. The bike trail is notiticable in that it is practically all downhill from the start to about 4 miles out where I usually turn around. To get the required miles I ran out and back for 8 miles, then out to the three mile mark and back for the other 6. That works out to two major downhill legs and (of course) two major uphills for the returns.

My pace was great going down for the first leg but I goofed the turnaround. I had located the 4 mile mark on the gmaps pedometer, but when I actually got there I could not pinpoint the spot. Eventually, after consulting my watch, I figured it was time to turn around. This made the run back unsatisfying because I couldn't properly judge my splits-- and I was particularly interested in whether I could keep my pace on the long uphill. On the second out-and-back I found the 3 mile spot pretty confidently, so for that part of the run I could check my splits and found that I was doing a good 8 minute pace (was hard work though).

When I got home I returned to the gmaps and determined that I had gone a good quarter mile to far out on the first leg. Figuring on that distance resulted in an average pace of 7.9 for the whole run. That made me feel very good, because if I can keep that pace for a hilly 14 mile run, then I should have a good chance of keeping a near 8 minute pace for the 'thon.

It's good my spirits felt good, because my body really ached after this run. Those hills really took it out on me. In fact I skipped my monday 5 miler to give myself more time to recover.

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