I want to keep up my fitness through the winter, so this was a great albeit, tedious event to test myself. The thought of running laps of .275 mi. for four hours had me a little nervous. My goal was to run at slightly a sub 8:00 average pace for the duration, which would have given me 30 total miles.
At least 95% my running is on rolling roadways, which I feel gives my legs a good mixture to keep things interesting. It also keeps me from utilizing my leg muscles in the same manner whenever I run. The track does none of this with it being flat and in a constant counterclockwise direction. I guess the act of dodging other runners in thick packs did mix things up however!
I am somewhat a slave to my Garmin and although I do try to run by feel, I constantly utilize it as a instrument of my performance. I did not have this luxury today. I could not gain a GPS signal, and therefore could only use it to time each lap. I suppose it was easy to calculate each split, so it wasn't really an issue. With my goal, I just knew to hit each lap around 2:00, or slightly under.
My first 60 or so laps came relatively easy, but I know I started to fade slightly. The monotony of it all started to take a toll. Fortunately enough though, I had my wife on the sidelines to encourage me along, and a friend of mine joined me through some of the laps.
I finished 95.5 laps in around 3:28:59, which is roughly the equivalent of a marathon. This was the slowest marathon time I've had in a while, with an exception being the Mid Mountain Marathon last year. That's a trail course, so it's a whole different animal! I had no intentions of this being a fast race, but just an opportunity to put in some mileage.
At the finish, the results showed me having completed 103 laps, not the 106 I had actually run. Other runners were expressing roughly the same discrepancy of a 3-5 lap deficit. Who knows where our laps went... I enjoyed this event, as it was my first full track racing experience, and a last kick of the year.
***Update: the results have been corrected on their page, and now reflect the runners true performances... | 