Time to Get Serious

22.14 miles, 2:46:12, 7:30 pace, (8:01 including breaks), Max HR = 165, Avg HR = 145, 75% Zone 3 and less, 25% Zone 4, 87 cadence

I'm choosing April as "Time to Get Serious" month for the Ogden Marathon. It occurred to me that I probably only mentioned it in passing, but I'll be running the Ogden Marathon with my friend Cory on May 17, 2008. He's gunning for a Boston Qualifying (BQ) time, and I'm going to do my best to help him achieve it.

I'm getting serious by being consistent with my running, ramping up my mileage, watching my food consumption, and doing my core exercises and leg exercises.

The marathon will be challenging because it's run at elevation, and has 1000+ feet of decline over the course including downhills (of course) and a few uphills as well. I'm hoping to be in shape to finish with a STRONG 3:20 so I'll be in good shape the whole way. 3:20 equals a 7:38 pace.

The legs were a bit tired today from my race yesterday, and the leg exercises I did to work my quads, but overall I produced a good effort, especially given the fact that I ran much of this by myself, and it was hot (75 degrees at 6AM) and muggy.

Mile 1-6 by myself. I wanted to try to meet someone at 6AM that I met yesterday for some early miles, and them meet with the Tornados at 7AM. I saw Jack, a Tornado and head of PIM at about mile 5 and realized he was going a different way and wouldn't be running with the Tornados, so I did a U turn and had to kick butt to catch up with him (a sub 7 mile).
7:50, 7:42, 7:51, 7:40, 7:36, 6:51

Mile 7-9 with Bayou City Road Runners. It turns out the Tornados went to a bachelor party last night for Jeff, a fellow runner from Tuesday's Rice Track session, and Jack was tagging along with BCRR because he had no faith the Tornados would be in any shape to run! Good thing I tracked down Jack. At mile 9 we stopped for a few minutes and had some water.
8:13, 7:32, 7:27

Mile 10-12 with BCRR. Jack and Mark? took off after the water break and it was everything I could do to catch up with them. After catching up I realized I wouldn't be able to keep up, and after running a 6:32 to catch up and a 7:04 once I caught up, I had to let them go and ran my next mile at 7:27 to catch my breath. By this time I'm starting to feel some serious fatigue and I realized I'm only half way through. I'm relieved to see Jack and Mark stop about 50 yards ahead of me at the next water station, but I continued to run another .4 miles around a loop while the rest of the crew caught up, just so my water break wouldn't be too long.
6:32, 7:04, 7:27

Mile 13-14 with Jack and Mark. The rest of BRCC is going down the Bayou toward downtown, but I follow Jack and Mark back to Memorial Park. My car is there, and I don't want to run alone along the Bayou without my phone just in case I run out of gas. I'm pretty tired by this point, and if I'm at Memorial I can walk to my car if I need to call it an early day.
7:28, 7:14

Mile 15-22 alone around Memorial Park. At Memorial I'm starting to get pretty tired. I calculate that I'll have to do two complete loops plus the distance back to my car and I'll be done. That's not overwhelming, so I concentrate on not slowing down too much. I'm wondering if the fatigue is because I'm not used to 22 miles (probably) or because I ran hard yesterday and did leg exercises (probably this too.) I saw several PIM people including Lisa and Dr. Bob who cheered me on. It was helpful, and I appreciated their support.
7:31, 7:38, 7:46, 7:42, 7:48, 7:48, 7:37, 7:20

After I finish up my run I drive directly back home without even cooling off because I want to see Julie. I even pass up my normal Jamba Juice stop so as not to waste any time. As I'm getting serious with this running, I want to make sure that I'm not spending too many hours away from her. I'm going to try to tally as many miles in the morning as possible to leave my evenings free.

One note on today's run. I stopped my watch at the water breaks, so my pace of 7:30 did not factor in 10.5 minutes of stoppage. The two with BCRR were really long. In general I don't like to do that because of three reasons: 1) It brings the heart rate down, 2) It's not simulating race-day conditions, and 3) My legs tend to get stiff making starting challenging. If I had it my way, I'd do what I did for the other stops, and make each break less than 15 seconds. But this is not practical for a large group, and even if there were 20 water fountains allowing a stop like this, it's not really what running in a group is all about. For most groups it's about the social aspect of running, and the breaks give everyone a chance to catch up and catch their breath. I don't want to mislead you, though, because the BCRRs have many people who can and do kick my butt at every distance. Their breaks obviously don't take away from the training.

One 22 miler down. Here is a recap of what I did leading up to the White Rock Marathon as far as long runs go, superimposed onto the calendar for Ogden:
3/29 - 22
4/5 - 10 (race)
4/12 - 24
4/19 - 15 (race)
4/26 - 22
5/3 - 14
5/10 - 10
5/17 - 26.2 Ogden Marathon