Bringing It Down A Few Pips
Yesterday was my last "long" run before my race in a couple of weeks. It turns out May 2nd is a very popular day to hold a race – I know of friends participating in races locally in Seattle, Vancouver (BC), Lincoln, New Jersey, Long Island and San Francisco on that day.
My run was originally slated to be 10 miles, but I asked Lesley if she would have any objection to me doing 12 miles instead. Thinking hard about the races I did last year, I am fine through the 1st 10 miles, but I need to be stronger in the last 5k (3.2 miles) of the event. So the more times that I get runs in of 12 or more miles, the better. Oh yeah, the other reason for the extra 2 miles was that Marc and I were going to be hosting 6 other hard-core foodies and wine drinkers at the house later on that day. I needed to burn as many calories as I could before this dinner – you can see why here. What a fun time, but I digress.
Lesley was ok with it, although it meant getting up 30 minutes earlier on Saturday morning (6am) to meet an earlier group to take me to where the run would start. The positive side of getting up and meeting the 1st car at 6:30am was that I was able to see a pretty sunrise over Lake Washington and the Cascades (camera is terrible on the phone and no, I don't run with a camera). But I am still not a huge fan of getting up early on a weekend to run. Anyway, I was waiting with Carol in her car to start and was pleasantly surprised to see one of my running buddies, Tricia, also wanting to start early. Score. Off we went.
The course this morning had a little bit from the Seattle Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon course (June) and a fair amount of the Seattle Half Marathon course (November), so we were pretty familiar with what was in store for us. Tricia left me at mile 8 (she is doing triathlon training so gets other homework assigned to her schedule aside from running), and I went off for what was the hardest part of the run.
The 1st 9 miles were flat and then there is a miserable climb that I remembered from the race that I PR'd back in November. It still sucks in case you were wondering because it is under a ½ mile but steep. I did run it a few seconds faster than I did in the race, which is good. I think having that positive experience from just a few months ago also helped keep me focused as I was swearing all the way up the hill. Once I reached the top, I knew I could finish the rest of the run at a very solid pace.
The intent was not to run at race pace, but at a moderate pace, which I think I did so it was a good outing.
With the race in under a couple of weeks, I need to stay active but ratchet down the intensity of my workouts a bit. I've been going at things at a fairly intense clip since the beginning of January between the runs and elliptical. I've haven't been as religious about doing my core work as I should have been and the aches/pains have crept in a little. I should be fine for the race, but am just going to be vigilant about getting extra stretching stuff in each night.
The difference in this training cycle has been that I had some lactate threshold testing done to identify my optimal training zones for my heart. The net effect is that my workouts on the elliptical have been closer to how I feel on a run in terms of how hard my heart is working. So it's been a good, but intense training effort since the beginning of the year. This means I am ready to taper, and am focused on staying healthy for the homestretch so I can give what I hope is a top-notch performance in a couple of weeks.