Today’s 20 miler capped a 45 mile week for me, 13 miles more
than last week. Oddly enough I did this
to myself on purpose in order to push myself beyond my normal comfort
zone. I also realize that 45 miles is
chump change for a lot of marathoner’s but as the saying goes, to each their
own ability…
I ran on the C&O Trail again, starting right at
sunrise. It was a little gloomy under
the trees without the sunlight, but things brightened up quickly. Within my first couple of miles I came within
10 feet of a deer that was standing right on the edge of the path. I slowed to
a walk so that I wouldn’t spook it any more than I was going to and hoped to
take a picture, but she quietly slipped back into the forest and out of
sight. It’s kind of amazing how easily
they can disappear amongst the trees.
I was also running with my heart monitor (and I’ll have a separate
post on this) and my intent was to keep my heart rate within my “burn and churn”
range between 125 and 143 bpm, and I pretty much did. My average HR was 131 with a max HR of 143. I
was hoping that if I ran within “the limits” that I would feel strong in the
last few miles, but possibly because this was a really hard run week, I didn’t.
The last 3 miles were really, really hard! On top of that, my feet were
starting to hurt. The trail is basically crushed rock and I sought to run along
the edges that were a bit softer and had more soil than rock content. In some places I was able to run on the
sort-of low grass. But with little recent rain the ground was very hard, and
boy did I feel it.
Another by-product of getting tired is sloppy running and
posture failure. As I got tired, particularly as I was entering mile 16, I
noticed that my footfalls were flatter and I felt that I was pounding the
ground vs stepping through. I would try to adjust my stride and body posture,
but my legs were simply tired – I was running out of juice. As I got tired and
failed to maintain my posture and form, my knee’s started to bother me. In addition,
I could feel my that hamstrings were tightening and I felt like I was edging
ever so close to cramping. I sucked down another Gu at mile 17 and I sipped my
water/Gatorade mix throughout. Interestingly enough, between thorough miles 16
and 18 my HR was fairly nominal (mid 130’s), but as I got to mile 19 my HR
started popping into the 140’s. I found that by managing my breathing I was
able to manage my HR some, but obviously I was reaching a point of fatigue. I should also mention that it was getting warm (mid 70's) and about a 90% humidity. I was dripping sweat and my shirt and shorts were soaked. The
good news is that I didn’t cramp and I finished my run successfully with a nice
9:30m/m pace average. Of interest to me is that last weeks 18 miler average
pace was 9:00m/m, on a week that I only logged 33 miles. Obviously I was tired
from the start for this 20 miler.
Earlier in the week I had a marvelous (and hard) 10 mile run
around DC – across the Key bridge, along the Potomac all the way around East
Potomac Park and then back across the Memorial bridge. It was a good run and
the weather was great.
8 weeks to the MCM !!
Next week is a “down” week with my longest run closer to 10 miles. I am
looking forward to that!
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