1pm, 62 degress and breezy. Crazy tough run today. Started out with some nice easy miles and ran 4.4 to the top of Grant's Trail. This portion of the run was into the wind, and it was a bit of a battle. 4.4 in 33:41 (7:39s). My stomach was feeling, sluggish, as if I had maybe eaten too much for breakfast (I didn't and that was 3 hours ago). At any rate, I shook it off and started what I hoped to be a race pace portion of the run. My goal was to run down to the bottom of the trail at race pace. So I tried to hit a quick, but comfortable pace. Well, I blew that. The trail is nearly flat, with just the ever so slightest hint of a downhill when running from top to bottom. I hit 7.5 miles in 48:52 (6:31s). At this point I did a very very slow jog the last .5 of the trail to cool down. Then my goal was to do just easy aerobic miles back up the trail and 1.4 miles past it to where my wife was picking me up. Ugh. I was struggling to get going. 4.5 miles back up the trail I hit a GU and stopped for some water (did an extra .2 getting from the trail to the ice rink lobby and back to the trail). I think this 4 mile section was probably hitting about 7:50s or so, but I wasn't sure. When I got back to the top of the trail the time for the 8 miles was 59:46 (7:28s) and the last 1.4 back to the car was 10:29 (7:29s). The total run, excluding the .7 recovery miles when I stopped my watch, was 21.3 miles in 2:32:47 (7:10s).
I was pretty much destroyed by the end of this run, but I think it was a quality workout and I will make some solid adaptions to this run once I recover. | 