My First 20: A Tale of Two Halves On January 3, 1993, the Buffalo Bills were playing the Houston Oilers in an AFC playoff game. The Bills were missing their starting QB, Jim Kelly, and were led by the backup, Frank Reich. Houston destroyed them in the first half--going into the locker room with a 28-3 point lead. With half a football game left against an unknown QB, all they had to do was mail in the second half and they were off to the next round--or so they thought. Buffalo came back and tied the game in regulation and went on to kick a winning field goal in overtime. As unstoppable as Houston looked in the first half, they just looked sick, tired and inept in the second half. This pretty much describes my first 20 mile run. I went out fast. I wanted to see how long I could maintain a 9 minute-mile pace. All the significant uphill on my course was in the first 10 miles. My splits were 9:10, 8:44, 8:46, 9:46, 9:42, 9:36, 9:32, 9:50, 9:50. 10:34. That put me at 1:35:30 for the first half with all the hard uphill behind me. All I had to do was cruise the downhill second half and I could come in close to 3 hours--or so I thought. For some reason, the second half was a lot more difficult than anticipated. I was tired from the uphill running and I figured I could recover after about half a mile and settle back into my faster pace. I never got back to that pace again. The last five miles were a disaster. My iPod died, then my watch died at 16.5 miles. The iPod didn't bother me so much as I wasn't really planning on running with it. But when I measured out my course, I only knew that 20 miles was somewhere along the Porter Rockwell trail in Draper and I was depending on the watch to tell me where that was. To make things worse, I was feeling sick to my stomach. It really slowed me down. My legs felt good and my wind was fine, but the sick feeling was directly proportional to my effort level. This kept me from running hard and pushed me more towards walking--which I did a few times in the last couple of miles. I felt similarly on my second run in the Ragnar Relay this year. I'm not sure where it came from, but I want to blame my diet. I worked through lunch the day before because Lizzie had a soccer game in the afternoon that I wanted to attend. I didn't want to eat late because we were going out with my family for my sister's birthday--where I ended up protein loading at Tucano's. This is not the best strategy for fueling the day before a twenty mile run. I was really glad to get to the end of this one and I am also glad that I will be attempting two more 20-milers before the marathon. Had this been my only one, I'd be concerned about the race. I hope this does not happen again so that I can feel confident in my ability to do this. After feeling so good the week before, I had some serious doubts today. Really it comes down to poor preparation in every way. I hadn't charged my equipment and I hadn't properly charged my body. (Stacie had left me home to watch Josie (who just turned two Friday) the two consecutive nights before the meatfest. Now, Josie is a big time party animal, so hanging out with her is always fun, but you never can get anything done that you had planned.) I thought about calling this Murphy's Run, but I don't want to tempt Murphy. While a number of things did go wrong, no where close to anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. I'd list some of the things that I'm glad didn't happen, but this entry is too long as it is. At any rate, I survived twenty miles and while I didn't finish strong, I did finish. I had to. I left my car in Draper the night before.
Partial Workout Data
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