Oxygen Deprived

Last Thursday morning, as I was trying to quickly catch my breath and stretch before my group headed out - I heard something mentioned about a training run on Saturday in which they would run the entire 10 mile course. My first thought was - I don't need to do that because I already did that last Saturday. But as the weekend drew nearer and as I thought about the long run I still needed to fit in this week - I realized why not run the course again. The best way to get good at something is to practice, not to mention what a beautiful place to run and the group would meet early which means I'd have time to get the run in without interfering with other plans already in place for Saturday.

With this in mind, I headed out quickly after work on Friday to pick up a fuel belt and some gels. I've been wanting to get a fuel belt for sometime now and thought this would be a perfect time as it's really starting to warm up and I need to start getting used drinking on my runs. I'm also starting to experiment with gels and so I bought some for me try out as well as a couple to pay my friend back as he's been gracious enough to offer me one on a couple of our recent long runs. I was planning on going to a running store that I hadn't been to before, it's actually located downtown but as I got off work and realized how much traffic I would have to contend with I quickly thought of another running store that I wanted to try. It was also much more on the way home than the first and so I gave them a quick call via 411 and they had what I was looking for. This ended up saving me a ton of time as I just stopped in quickly on my way home. I ended up buying the belt which holds 6 bottles and has a small pouch to hold a couple gels or what have you. I think 6 bottles might be a bit overkill for most of my current runs but with wanting to train for a marathon in the near future I figured it would be the best way to go. Besides, on shorter runs I could also use it without bringing all the bottles along just depending on how far I was going to be running.

So Saturday morning I got up early and drove across town (traffic was much better than during the week which was really nice) but when I arrived I had a hard time finding anyone else from the training runs. After a minute or two of driving around the parking lot where we were to meet I finally found a couple cars. There were only 6 people there (including me) and no one that I recognized. After some quick stretching I put on my garmin and my new fuel belt and went over to introduce myself. Three of the runners stated that they normally run around an 8:00/mi pace (I knew I wouldn't be running with them) and apparently one of the others there is the leader of one of the trail groups. He stated that he was going to take it easy and run a 9 or 10:00/mi pace. This is my goal pace for race day but I thought what the heck, I might as well try to hang with him as much as possible. The other runner was planning to run with him too and I got the feeling they've ran together before.

Anyway, so off we went - all together at first but then the faster group of 3 quickly started to pull away. We were running at a pace faster than that of what I'm used to but all in all it wasn't too bad. I thought about telling them that if I start to fall behind that they didn't need to feel that they had to wait for me - as I know the course and have done it before. But I held back telling them this - I thought I would bring it up later if needed but told myself at that time to just concentrate on keeping up the pace and staying with them for as long as possible.

As we hit the hills I had a hard time settling into my normal breathing - probably because we were going faster than I was used to. A trend I noticed was for the leader I mentioned to push hard on the hills leaving the two of us. The other runner was faster than me on the downhill but I was able to catch up to him and often pass him on the uphill portions. We'd all kind of get back together at the top of each hill and then proceed on. After several miles I noticed that I was starting to drift back (i.e. fall behind) on the downhill as they really seemed to be pushing it much harder than I was used to but I continued to catch up to the slower of the two on the uphill. It was interesting to see how much faster I was running while trying to keep up with them. I felt pretty good and after a while got some kind of normal breathing going even though my pace was faster than I'm used too. I felt a little tightness in my stomach as well but I also contribute this to the pace we were holding.

Speaking of, my mile splits came out looking like this... 9:41, 9:26, 10:05, 9:03, 9:14, 8:47, 9:39, 9:46, 10:17 and 9:37.

I also had two more at 11:41 and 11:56 on my way back to the jeep - I was totally wiped out by this point and felt like crawling or just laying down for a little while. But these were after what would have been the finish line on the race course.

I have never run so many sub 10 minute miles together, not to mention a sub 9 thrown in there too! Wow! That gets me pretty excited about the progress I'm making. This sub 9 minute mile was also the mile that I gu'ed which was a little tricky for me at first as I normally slow down (not speed up) to do this sort of thing so I guess that was good practice for race day.

Once we reached trading post (end of my sub 9 minute mile) we started the climb back up and at this point it was agreed that everyone would just continue back on their own if needed which would ensure that everyone (besides me) would also be getting a good workout. Though I didn't bring it up I thought it was a good idea as this is the part of the course represents a long climb and I didn't want anyone waiting on me. But as it turns out, I wasn't the one bring up the rear. The trail group leader heading off and I was able to keep him in sight for most of the first climb which lasted about a mile. During which time I was able to pass the other runner who openly admits the uphill portions are his weakness (he's very fast on the downhill though). I think he normally runs trails during the morning training runs but the group I'm in runs these hills every time and I've really been working hard and pushing myself on them which seems to be starting to paying off. By the time we climbed the first mile or so we were all alone, I never saw either of them again until the run was finished.

I kept pushing the up-hills as hard as I could and found that I wasn't able to push the down-hills as much as I had when I was trying to catch up and stay with them on the first half of the course. All in all I keep it moving pretty well though. I tried to make myself comfortable by breathing and drinking water from my new fuel belt (I only ended up drinking two of the four bottles I brought).

I must admit, I ran hard enough that I didn't notice much of the surrounding beauty though I'm sure it's all still there. I think a high point for me (no pun intended) was when I had finished pushing up the last hill (the highest point of the course) which is around mile 9 and I was roughly at 1:29:30 with less than one mile to go and it was literally all downhill from here. I knew even if I ran a 10 minute mile I would still beat my race day goal of an overall 10 minute mile pace. I pushed and tried to keep my legs moving on this downhill. My legs were feeling extremely spent at this point and it was about all I could to just to keep them landing out in front of me. I ended up down where the finish line would be with somewhere around an hour and 37 or 38 minutes. I don't recall right now as my garmin actually clocked mile 10 before the finish line and since I had to continue to run out of the park I just remember it was somewhere around there.

I was really excited as I had just beat my race pace goal on a training run. I guess maybe it wasn't as worthy a goal as I had once thought. So that leaves me with thoughts of a new goal, not really knowing what that should be since I really don't know how much more I could actually push on race day than I did on this run. Maybe I'll be surprised - who knows!

If I leave off the 2 mile run back to my jeep (for which it was 90% uphill and my legs were completely destroyed) then my overall pace for the 10 mile race course was 9:34/mi (if I recalculated my time correctly at 10 miles to be 1:35:41). That just amazes me!