A.M. Total of 20 miles in 2:39:55. Benjamin is working on his Eagle Scout. He had a requirement for his hiking merit badge to do several hikes of 10 miles and one 20 mile hike. He read the rules and discovered that there was no restriction on the terrain, and the only stipulations were that the distance is covered on foot and that the breaks are short. So we figured that running counted. He used two of his 10 mile training runs, and the half-marathon race to cover three 10 mile hikes, then he had enough actual 10 mile hikes for the balance, and now he had to do a 20 mile hike. We took care of that today. Now a 20 mile run did not exactly fit into his training plan, but we did some things to minimize the negative. First, we kept the effort low. I finally got around to getting him an HRM and he wore it today. Last night I was quite surprised to discover that his resting HR is 52, almost as low as mine (48). Maybe it should not be so surprising - for my level of aerobic fitness (I can run 6:00 pace at 4500 feet on flat ground at around 145 and 5:00 pace at 170 - the only problem is that I cannot hit 180 and run 4:30) my resting HR is abnormally high. Through trial and error in the early miles I determined that his optimal HR was around 140. So I made sure that it was there in the first 14 miles of the run. We stopped at 7 miles for him to drink the magic mix of EmergenC and dextrose, and again at around 9 - he also needed to go to the bathroom. At 14 miles we returned home to run with the other children. He drank more of the magic mix while they were getting ready. Jenny did 4, Julia 3, Joseph 3, Jacob 2, William 1. Our last 3 miles were again without the other children. His HR climbed to 150 at the end, and in the last 200 meters which is uphill it hit as high as 174. His total running time was 2:39:35 because he ran ahead of me with the faster child when I stayed back with the slower child during the little kid runs. The real time including all of the logistical breaks for 20 miles was 3 hours and 10 minutes. I think that qualifies as having short breaks. He handled it quite well - he said it was much easier than racing a half marathon. | 