Practice To Suffer So Racing Becomes Easy

PM:  11.29 miles at Kettle Morain National Forest on Nordic Ski Trails Full Blue Loop with Purple add on.  8:08,7:41,7:24,7:25,7:11,7:20,7:44 (steep uphill sections w/no switch backs),7:22,7:27,7:23,7:35,4:51 pace for last .28, which included 6x100 meter striders. Avg=7:27  Perfect weather day Temp 77/50%. 

AM:  9.18 miles @ Dorothy Carnes West Park.  Undulating terrain, just tried to maintain same effort throughout park trails.  9:01,7:43,7:53,8:12,7:58,7:26,8:01,8:02,7:04 = Avg 7:56.  Perfect weather 75/57% humidity.  Running in the Hattori on the packed dirt and short grass is so invigorating! 

PM:  8.52 miles around Fort w/Jameson 7:54,7:17,7:39,7:11,6:41,7:09,7:27,6:49, last .52 6:47 pace = Avg 7:14 pace

AM:  5.23 miles w/Jameson to Daycare and back home alone.  7:52,7:46,7:37,7:18,6:58, 6:24 pace for last .23 Avg = 7:27 pace, run included 4x75-150 meter strides.  Temp 76/66% humidity.

PM: Big Workout - 10.13 miles - 1 mile warm-up, 7K alternating between 1K at 10K pace and 2K at 1/2 marathon pace continuous for as long as I could take the pain.  Splits were 1K 3:24, 2K 7:35 (3:50, 3:45 splits) ,1K 3:29, 2K 7:35, 1K 3:28.  Finished with a broken up cooldown due to our 1st CC practice.  The legs felt dead all the way through this run tonight; not a good feeling.  I've got to remind myself I'm holding some significant mileage right now.  I ran the 10K pace right on, but the 1/2 marathon pace was 15 sec. too slow (ended up being somewhere between 25K&25mile pace).  This is the 2nd or 3rd quality workout I've had a hard time with.  One more workout thats off and I'll have to re-evaluate my plan.  Avg pace=6:52    

Afternoon: 9.17 miles easy - no watch on glacial drumlin trail w/Koth Park add on.  Legs felt dead like I expected for the first 4, but came alive for last 1/2 of run.

Evening:  5.01 miles Avg 8:22 pace.  I have never felt hungrier on a run than I did tonight.  Not a good feeling at all.  After 2 miles in I felt nauseous and a little hungry.  By mile 3 I was ready to eat my hand off.  The rest of my run I was counting down the 1/2 miles till I reached my end point.  As soon as I finished I skipped out on the club and my lifts for the Mexican restaurant next door.  I put down two monster burritos, basket full of tortilla chips, and finished off the meal with a monster friend ice cream dish with whip cream and cherry topping in a fried flour tortilla like bowl in less than 20 minutes!  I must have eaten too clean today and the miles + yard work caught up with me on the run.  Can't say I've ever had that problem before, but I guess I've also never run around 110 miles in a 7 day period before either.

Temp today was 84/75% humidity 

AM:  8 miles w/4x400 @ 1/2 marathon pace and 8x200 @ 5K pace.  2 mile warm-up to Fort Middle School Track. Splits:  1:23 (whoops too fast!),1:29,1:28,1:29 - these felt a little harder than they should, but not too bad.  Splits for 8x200:  38,39,38,39,38,39,39,39 - all felt under control, was under goal pace by 1/2-1sec, but not too concerned about 5K goal pace, just doing these to shake the legs out.  Avg=7:17 pace.  Finished with some lifts (body only legs).  I ran into my friend Karen who's battled some injuries in the past year, but seems to have found her stride.  She was at the track doing some 1/2 marathon pacing to get ready for the Madison 1/2 marathon this weekend as well.  Looks like I might have caught a ride to Mad City, knowing this is move in week for UW-Madison I welcome the ride!  It's going to be a mad house up there this weekend.  Temp 79/38% - The air feels great, hope it's that way for the 1/2 marathon.

PM:  7.90 miles @ 8:12 pace.  Went to Madison tonight to scope the 1/2 marathon course.  I know Madison well, but some of the mid miles I wasn't so sure about in the 1/2.  Jen is back run walking now from her knee surgery so she and Jameson accompanied me.  I did the run walk for the first 2 miles w/Jen and Jameson.  Jen turned back and I went the next two miles up the course.  I must say Madison is a beautiful city!  The course has some hills, but no gut busters, so it should make for a fast course.  I've been told they have some good entertainment along the course too.  This is only the 3rd year of the race, but it's set up to be monster event someday.

PM:  3.23 miles @ 8:12 pace

A 4:13 PR today for 14^th place overall out of 2,772 participants!  I really wanted to break 1:20, but I’m really happy with this race for several reasons.  My previous PR was my split at Grandma’s Marathon (1:24:30) as this is my 2^nd official lifetime ½ marathon race.  My first official was a 1:37 with two weeks of training coming off a 9 year break from running.  I’m also happy because I got this PR on the highest single week and month of lifetime mileage I’ve ever run.  I wasn’t planning for this race, but it’s something I wanted to add into my training to help me gain some experience going into the cooler months of racing where I’m shooting for my peak ½ marathon.  I reluctantly decided to do this one on a 1 day taper.  I was nervous about injury and didn’t really know what to expect.  Fortunately, I have no injuries and feel very reasonable in terms of soreness/fatigue.  I took a ton of positives and experience from this race, so if the only negative is I didn’t break 1:20 – I can live with that!

I started out my day with 4 hours of sleep due to a friend from North Carolina whom I haven't seen in years flying into town.  Unfortunately, we couldn't meet up until around 9.  I have no regrets about doing this and I know he would have done the same for me.  I also was mainly doing this 1/2 as a high level workout.  When my feet hit the floor at 4:30 am I was actually more awake then I would have been if sleeping 8-9 hours, so I don't really feel the sleep affected this race in a negative way.  I'm really tired now though, so I'll need to get a good nap.  My goal was to break 1:20, but in the back of my mind I didn't really know for sure I could do it.  My best race to judge paces on was a 1 mile race (4:50) I ran about 3 weeks ago.  Mcmillianrunning.com says I should be at 5:55-6:05 pace based on the conversion from 1 mile to a 1/2 marathon, so I tried to base my training on this pace over the past 3 weeks.  However, more often than not I found 6:05 pace to be very hard in my training.  Without a proper recent race distance and solid workouts at this pace, I just wasn't sure. 

The race itself had a 1 1/2 hour delay due to lightning.  The race directors made the right call though because the lightning and rain were very heavy.  I can't imagine how hard it is to make those calls, but in this case it was good because we would have run the whole race in serious rain and wind.  I ran down to the finish and grabbed a banana and water to help keep me from eating an arm off.  The little bit of oatmeal I ate at 4:30 wasn’t doing much justice an hour into the delay.  I wasn't sure if people use gels in a 1/2, so I brought one for good measure as a just in case thing.  Well that plan failed because the gel fell out of my key pouch smack dab into the unforbidden abyss!  Most of the participants found shelter in parking garages, which is where I found myself waiting.  It was really cold!  I was shivering waiting around in the garage, but happy it wasn't 80+ degrees w/high humidity like it normally is on Aug. 20th in WI.

The first mile I just tried to get out comfortable, but not too hard because it was mostly uphill.  I hit the 1^st mile in 6:09.  I let a lot of people get out ahead of me.  I decided it would be a smarter race for me not to get out too hard and chase people down (to to ensure a strong finish) instead.  I thought the first mile was a good one, but wanted to test the legs to feel what 5:55 felt since again this was supposed to be the low end of my pace range.  The 2^nd mile was 5:53 into the wind and now heavy rain on mostly flat ground.  That mile was a little too hard.  The 3^rd mile was more like I was looking for in 6:03. In the forth mile I hit 5:54 due to a surge to run with a large group of runners because the wind and rain was just slamming my body.  The 5^th mile was 6:05, and at this point I felt it was just the right amount of effort as I drafted behind the group. The 6^th and 7^th miles were mostly uphill through UW’s Arboretum.  I was fortunate to have a runner who liked to surge on hills pull up next to me, so I went with him and my legs welcomed the change of pace.  The splits were 6:03, 6:13 for the 6^th/7^th miles and I was still feeling good, so I decided to  put a surge in to catch another runner on the 8^th downhill mile and hit 6:02.  The 9^th mile was mostly flat splitting another 6:02.  This is where I made my mistake.  The 10^th mile was uphill all the way, but I was still closing in on runners and I was pressing hard. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my hill surge friend to help me along though and I split a 6:22 (which cost me my time goal).  The 11^th mile was a 5:55 with a steep downhill section.  The 12^th mile was mostly flat and I was having fun picking off runners running a 6:05.  The last mile a runner passed me so I surged to match his pace.  I went with him and challenged him for a good half of the last mile.  I wasn’t able to sustain the pace and he continued to surge.  I think if I had more races under me I’d be able to sustain a longer kick, but today wasn’t the day to do it.  However,  I found myself using a kamikaze kick (something that helped me win a lot of races in college and the reason I stick with the weights) to take another runner on the downhill finish (last 100 yards) with a 6:03 1.1 mile split.  I was really surprised to place 14^th in that large of a race.  In the last 3 miles I passed 7 people and was only passed by 1, accomplishing my strategy of finishing strong.  This leaves me hungry for another! 

My two friends whom I rode to the race with also gained PR's.  I really enjoyed their company at the race and I was proud to hear of their accomplishments with the personal struggles they've faced over the past year.

 PM:  4.1 mile shakeout (no watch)