Conditions: Rainy, 66-70 degrees Course: hilly miles 1-14 then 4.74 miles flat along the coast Splits were 6:45 (mostly slight uphill), 6:12 (downhill was steep), 6:34 rolling, 6:24 rolling, 6:29 rolling, 6:33 rolling,6:51 hill, 6:28 rolling, 6:27 rolling, 6:35 rolling, 6:51 hill, 6:42 rolling (started to feel my legs here), 6:39 (rolling), 6:51 (bit of a hill),6:41 flat, 6:46 flat, 6:49 flat, 6:58 flat but with headwind, 4:31(6:04 pace) kicked it in a bit Miles 1-5 were pretty uneventful. Felt like 6:30 pace was a jog. Mile 3 I picked up the effort a little to catch and run with a group for a while. This ended when my shoe came untied at mile 5. Then I latched on to this guy who passed me while I retied my shoe. We stayed together till mile 13. A group caught us and passed us but we kept a fairly even effort in the rolling hills. The group that passed us around mile 9 included the winning female. That bugged me, but she was really good. I consoled myself with the fact that I could beat her at the mile and 5k most likely. I dropped the guy I was running with in the final hill of the course and he never made up the gap. At this point my legs were feeling pretty stiff. They weren't that tired, but the pounding (especially the downhills) took its toll. I was already pretty happy with my performance so I just rolled in without undue strain until the last half mile or so in which I decided to kick it into another gear. I probably could have done 6:15 pace for the last 3-4 miles because aerobically I wasn't working and I had glycogen because I had been eating honey. Its just that the motivation wasn't there. Oh well, this wasn't a goal race for me, just good training. And the course was a bit long, like 200m. Afterwards I took a dip in the ocean to ice my legs for 15 min. It wasn't super cold, but its what I had.
So what does this mean for my marathon. Well, I still have time to train, and what I learned from this is that the cumulative pounding on asphault makes a given pace more difficult later in the race. So I am going to make sure I get several 20+ milers on the road before the marathon to get used to the pounding. I also plugged my time into mcmillan's running calculator and it said I could expect a 2:57:32, so although not much room for error, at least I am not already behind the ball and this course was pretty hilly which my marathon is not. I also need to get in the proper vo2max and threshold work such that I actually peak for the marathon as opposed to just running it off base training. I am not afraid of the glycogen wall anymore, now I am afraid of the asphault wall (or hill perhaps, as it doesn't destroy you all at once like the glyco wall, but gradually makes you stiff such that a given pace is more difficult to maintain). We will see what I can put together for the half marathon in two weeks. I think I can manage about 6:20 pace which would put me just under 1:23. I think my goal will be breaking 1:23.
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