Last Saturday I only ran 6 miles. My legs were still sore from the half marathon on May 2nd, and I just wasn't feeling it. When I decided that my long run for the week was not even close to a long run, I knew I could be in serious trouble for Utah Valley marathon next month. I decided I'd look for someone desperate to sell their Ogden marathon bib, that way I'd be forced to get my first "long run" in since before my knees got hurt in February.
I texted all the people on KSL trying to sell their bibs and offered them all $30 for their bib. I was hoping someone would be smart enough to take $30 rather than losing their entire entrance fee. Luckily a few people said they'd take it. I decided to take the kids that said he would meet me at the expo. He wanted everything out of the bag except the bib. I was fine with that since I have plenty of shirts, and don't really need samples and ads that I wouldn't use anyways.
My goal was to start slow and maybe push a little towards the end if I was feeling good. I had wanted to run 7:20's-7:30's for the race. I took a 100 mg of caffeine 45 minutes before the race, a peanut butter gu and 200 mg caffeine 15 minutes before the race, chocolate outrage gu's at 45 minutes, 90 minutes and 160 minutes, and an espresso love gu at 125 minutes. I drank water and/or powerade at just about every aid station. This worked well and I felt good through the entire run.
For the first 9 or 10 miles I had to keep telling myself to slow down. I wasn't going way too fast, but I was about 10 seconds faster per mile than I wanted, and I didn't want to blow up at the end.
I came through the half at 1:35:17. I started to think that maybe I could start pushing a little sooner than I had planned and see if I could negative split by 5 minutes and get a new PR. Luckily I was smart and just stuck the plan. I don't know if I could have PR'd, but I didn't want to make my recovery take too long and then have done more harm than good for Utah Valley.
The hills from 14-17.5 seemed waaay easier than in years past. I don't know why, I haven't done any hill training since maybe Februaury, and my training hasn't been very good at all. Unfortunately the weather wasn't in our favor for any tail wind down the canyons (at least I didn't notice any) so I din't have much of a push where I was hoping to pick up some time. At one point around mile 20 I even felt a head wind for a couple of minutes.
The second half was 1:35:26, 9 seconds slower than the first half. I didn't push too hard, and didn't let the race atmosphere force me into doing something I didn't want to do. Overall I am extremely satisfied with this "long run." I don't know what I placed overall or in my age division. I didn't run with the timing chip because I bought the bib from a kid in a different age group and I didn't want to mess up placings (not that I was expecting to place, but just in case). I have messed up placings before by running with someone elses chip, and I don't want to do that again.
Hopefully I can get 2 or 3 weeks of good training in and then set a PR at Utah Valley. I am hoping that the conditions will be in our favor then, but they certainly can't be any worse than they were today.
Here are my splits:
1 7:18
2 7:14
3 7:05
4 7:10
5 7:13
6 7:12
7 7:10
8 7:13
9 7:19
10 7:19
11 7:20
12 7:27
13 7:29
13.1 1:35:17
14 7:14
15 7:22
16 7:11
17 7:11
18 6:55
19 7:10
20 7:11
21 7:03
22 7:03 I started to get some cramps around here in both calfs and ham strings. Luckily nothing too bad, but it still wasn't super fun to have to worry about a bad cramp coming.
23 7:07
24 7:25
25 7:34
26 7:44
.2 1:52 (7:57 pace), second half 1:35:26
Total 3:10:43
Avg pace of 7:16
Total distance was 26.24. Up until mile 13, right as I passed the mile marker, my watch would hit the mile. I was running tangents pretty well, and this is by far the closest my watch has been to the "certified" race distance.
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