Oct 15 – 8 mile trail run

It’s been a long time since I got to start my Sunday like this:

Next weekend, in my final race for the season, I will be anchoring a relay team at the She Rox triathlon. Eve is swimming, Renee will bike and I will run. It’s on the same course that I’ve run twice now – the South Shores Boat Ramp area. The Fearless 5K is held there. It is an all concrete sidewalk, flat and easy 5k for the tri as well. So mentally I figured this will be fun. As long as there are not any 30mph wind gusts, I’ll be just fine.

Then one of our other LegUp Team friends put together a team from her workplace and entered! Dammit! Game on 🙂

Now I really DO need to set a PR on that course and get my time down under 30 minutes. Which I know I can do on that course. I just have to keep myself calm mentally because this time, it is not just ME I am competing with – other people are relying on me too! GULP!

Anyway….this week I got serious about my core and leg workouts at home and then I went on two speed runs. Those are routines when I warm up, then run fast for a mile, walk for a minute or two, then go fast again for another mile. I did those out on the 56 trail which is not flat. There are not really steep hills, but it is a rolling trail for sure. So even those one mile bursts had some climbs. Managed both nights to do one mile at a 9:40 pace, then the  second mile was 10 flat each time.

I came away at first sort of discouraged that I couldn’t maintain the sub 10 pace, but then reminded myself that it WAS hilly and that I hadn’t really prepped with nutrition for a max effort over distance.

I really wanted to go again on a couple of long easy runs this weekend to just keep my aerobic base solid. Saturday I ran with The Boyfriend for 3 miles on the same trail for 32 minutes. That was OK, but I still wanted to do more.

Thankfully the girls had an “easy” 90 min trail run on their plan for Sunday. “Easy” means, keep a steady, comfortable pace at an aerobic heart rate (not race pace).

I haven’t done that in a long time and I wondered how I would do but I planned my nutrition well, wrapped my toe that gets cranky on these ones and since we drove separate cars, I knew I could slow down if needed.

Only this time I didn’t slow down! At least, not nearly as much as I would normally.

See that? Other than the obvious slow down after the 6 mile point, I kept up it going pretty nicely. In prior long runs like this one, I would have had a lot more times in the 12-13 min mile range. I felt good the whole way! Even ran an extra .02 at the end of the trail on the street to round it up to 8 miles 🙂 Darn OCD 🙂

Temps were perfect, the trail was more hard packed all the way thanks to the rain earlier this week, no toe pain, my feet only really felt tired at the very end and the only time I really felt gassed was when we climbed one last hill. The only time we stopped was at the half way point where there is a porta potty so Renee could make a pit stop. Otherwise I just kept those feet chugging along!

Great runs like this are what convince people to do marathons, I am sure! Never fear. I thankfully don’t have time for this kind of nonsense but once a week at best.

And thanks to this run – a teensy little 5k will seem EASY!

Right?

Gulp.