Lower Expectations

Arrived safely in California on Thursday. I had moved my long run for the week to Friday, because of the family get together on Saturday. Something about these long runs (> 13 miles) that makes me sleepy for the rest of the day. And so I decided it would be better to be sleepy on Friday, rather than when everybody is together. We are celebrating Christmas a bit on the early side, so that we can be home (Colorado) for Christmas.

I wasn't really sure where to run, so I put out a question on the Running page on Facebook on Thursday night. Got a some good responses. In the process of trying to figure out how to make one of them work (Miner's Ravine Trail), I stumbled across the fact the American River Trail was a 15 minute drive. This took a bit of time on Friday morning, so I ended up starting out quite a bit later than planned and quite a bit later than typical for my long runs. I usually get started around 7am; Friday I was heading out at 10:15 to drive to the trail head.

Not really a problem, but my routine is to get up, have a 1/2 cup of coffee, consume a Clif Bar, and between 60 and 90 minutes after getting up, I'm generally running. As I was driving over to the trail, I decided I needed to eat another Clif Bar since I hadn't eaten any breakfast. That settled pretty well and I was anxious to get started. I parked at the fish hatchery off of Hazel (I believe this is in Folsom), and strapped on my Northface e-Race BOA hydration pack.

My target pace was 15 seconds faster than when running in Colorado and I was interested to see if running at a lower elevation made any difference at all. I learned the answer to that pretty quickly. I was cruising along about 10 seconds per mile ahead of my target pace and feeling like I was hardly working. I was nervous at first and kept trying to slow myself down. But the perceived effort was really pretty easy. After a while I decided not to worry about pace unless I was going more than 20 seconds ahead of target pace (that's 35 seconds faster than running in Colorado) and just focus on perceived effort.

At 8.5 miles, the turn-around point, I was really wondering if I had been running downhill the entire way. I felt very strong and was regularly having to slow down my pace. After making the turn, I didn't notice any sense of running uphill and was still needing to manage my pace. I was beginning to wonder if I wasn't ready to run my Boston qualifying time already - three weeks into my training.

Not too long after wondering about that, I hit the 13 mile mark. What happened next was interesting. I never was out of breathe or felt winded in any way. But my legs started wanting to slow down. Like they had a mind of their own. I found myself needing to focus on leg turnover and my pace problem seemed to bounce between running about 5 seconds a mile to slow, to 20 seconds to fast. Then I would settle down to about 10 seconds ahead of target pace. That pattern kept repeating. A couple of times, my pace was 40 seconds ahead of target pace. I never felt it in my lungs, but my legs were 'tired'.

I finished the run at 11 seconds per mile ahead of my target pace, 26 seconds faster than I would have done the same run in Colorado. After looking at my 1/2 mile splits, they were fairly consistent, even though my Forerunner was showing some big variations as I was running.

Having never run this far before, I really don't know what it feels like to get tired on a 17 mile run. Maybe this is what happens. Or maybe my lungs were ready for the challenge, but not my legs since I this was quite a bit faster turnover than they are used to. I'm not sure, but after I get my two other runs in at this elevation, I think I will drop an email off to the FIRST guys and get their thoughts.

I have been looking at this week as a test of the assumptions behind my training plan. I am assuming that my marathon pace at 500 ft elevation is about 12 - 15 seconds faster than at 6200 ft. I think that was confirmed on Friday. But frankly, I'm not sure. I may have just run at a higher effort level than I should have. I hope to know more after my interval workout and tempo run.