Waterfalls

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

All ready to go!

Weekend after this Drew is racing IM Az, and then two days later we are on a plane to Hawaii!!!! YIKES and YEAH!!!!!!

I've put in the miles, my head is in the right place, and I'm ready to go!!! I'm still a bit too serious about this, need to reach that place emotionally where it really is about going to play with my friends but I think that is coming. I've been pretty wiped out the past few weeks, and last weekend we put the cherry on top of the training sundae.

Saturday's Rim Rock Run race went quite well! The distance was 1.6 miles longer than I thought so it was 22.6 miles. Drew "ran" the race with me and we stayed solidly on strategy, and felt pretty good throughout it. The first 4 miles was tough (2300ft of climbing in 4 miles) but I did my run 4 and walk 2 and that worked well. I was always happy to hear the watch beep to walk, but I did not walk any of the run sections. The next 4miles were still uphill, but an easier grade and we stuck to the 4/2 and used this to recover a bit. At mile 8 the course turned to long rollers, more down than up. We switched to 8 min run/2min walk and that worked pretty good too. There were still some uphills and I struggled to make the 8 minutes a few times, but managed it. Once we went downhill at mile 19 I ran really easy, but kept the 2 minutes walk to try to minimize post-race aches in my quads/hamstrings.

In the end we finished in 4:47, a 12:42 per mile pace. I was not whupped at the finish and could have kept going at that pace for quite awhile more. I feel like I could have run this race much faster, but the goal was to feel like I could keep going at the finish and I definitely did. That pace would have given me a 5:30 marathon, or a 11:00 finish at Ultraman (assuming I could keep it up).

All in all it was a solid indicator and as we walked the mile back to the car we were talking about it pretty giddily. I'm glad I ran this race because I now feel like I am ready.

Coach is giving me the next 4 days really light and then it's short interval workouts until race day… Sweet! Time to rest, recover, and get ready to play...

One day at a time...
Leslie

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