I was going to run up Wasson peak today, but last night I decided to look at putting together a training schedule for the upcoming 50K and realized I was less than 20 weeks away. I felt like I needed to do something longer than 10 miles and my wife didn't want me to be gone too long so I decided not to do those miles on the trails. After making that decision and probably a mile or so into the run I decided to see how fast I could do a half marathon since the only one I have ever run was the Moab trail half. I must admit I didn't push this overly hard but tried to keep and 8:00 pace. I did great at that for the first 7 miles. At that point I went up Beacon hill (over 300 feet of vert in less than a mile 20% grade). This obviously slowed me down for the next mile but took more out of me than I thought and I could only manage to hold about 8:30 pace. I felt pretty good about the overall effort though. my time was 1:53:08. I think I could have done better at a real race, without the hill in the middle I would have been around 8:00-8:15 the whole way. |