Oxygen Deprived

On Saturday I finished up the week by running the entire 10 mile course for the up and coming race in Garden of the Gods. Overall the run went great, the weather was perfect (even a little warm once out on the road yet comfortable), my legs felt fresh and my shins didn't hurt. A friend, Dean, who I met at the training runs, met me at 9 am. We dropped my jeep off at the visitors’ center (near the finish line) on our way up to the starting line. While parking, we made plans to meet up on race day at a set of flag polls close to the start.

We started off a little bit faster than I was thinking we should for a long training run like this but we were both feeling pretty good. But since we’ve never run the entire course we didn't really know what to expect. We also both have the same goal of a 10:00/mi (or under) pace for race day. I guess we kind of started out to challenge whether or not that is a worthy goal.

My mile splits ended up like this... 9:47, 9:26, 10:06, 9:45, 10:19, 10:15, 11:17, 11:10, 11:01 and 9:53.

The first two miles were mostly flat or slightly downhill but then the hills start, the first of which is steep and long. This is followed by miles of running uphill and down as you make your way through the park. The scenery was just beautiful! At around half way (mile 5.5) I took an extra gel (only my second time) that Dean had and was feeling good. In fact, when we got down by the trading post I started to think that maybe a 10:00/mi goal on race day might not be ambitious enough as we were at a 10:00/mi overall pace and this was only a training run.

Well, then begins the climb back up from the lowest point to the highest point of the course which takes us roughly from mile 6 to mile 9 (11:00+/mi splits). Dean actually ended up having some fueling challenges – he didn't feel good early on and then bonked about the time I was starting to feel like pushing it (gel from mile 5?). As we approached mile 8 I started to speed up and pushed hard all the way up through the last hill at mile 9. This last hill is a killer. I was feeling good and pushed it pretty hard though my splits don't necessarily show it - I was able to drop my pace and push all the way to the top of this hill which is a huge confidence boost. Once at the top it's finally all downhill to the finish line but after that last hill it seemed to take a while to get a good stride going again.

So, all in all it was a great run and I’d have to say that a 10:00/mi overall pace is still a worthy goal.