If the miles behind me could be put into words before you, you would feel my efforts, my struggles, my desires. Most of all you would see my joy. Watch me from afar run the trails and hills and miles upon miles and you will see ...

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Zippidee -do da

So I don't know what it is but the plan has come together and everything is feeling perfect (knocking on wood). As soon as I was done the really long stuff I was to switch to shorter, faster runs. Not that I had an idea what I would be running these faster runs at, just that they'd be less than the 7:30 per mile I'd been doing in the training runs. I found out today that the Comrades "up" run this year is officially 86.96km, shorter than the "down" runs which are usually around 89km. This is good news as I have a better chance of hitting my time goal of 6:30. If it was 89km I'd had to have run a 6:57 average mile and now it'll be 7:13. Much more manageable and possible (but not guaranteed). To get a 6:15 it would be 6:57 per mile but with the hills I can't see that happening without me blowing up.
Anyways, back to the week that was. The key runs this past week were a fast 10k and a "long" run of 1:30. I slapped on the racing flats for the 10k and set out thinking I'd stay steady at a 6:45 pace. As the minutes went on I kept seeing the average pace on my Garmin dropping but I still didn't feel taxed. I ended up doing the first 3 miles averaging 6:18 per mile and the second 3 miles with a 6:04 pace and felt great. Now I know it's only one tenth of the race and I won't be going that fast, but it was a great mental boost to have some speed after weeks of long slow stuff. The next day was a 1:30 run along the hilliest part of 0ave again and ended up cranking out a 6:49 average over 13 miles. Again, felt awesome. Today was only an 8 mile scheduled run and after ten minutes I was flying again with steady breathing and not feeling bad at all. Two weeks to go before I leave!!

1 comment:

Vicki said...

Good luck! I just found your blog after doing a search on 86.96km! I know someone running there so was at the Comrades website and was surprised to see they called it 52 miles. I found that 86.96 km = 54.0344 mi.
Anyway, good luck and I will track you and wish you well!
~ vicki in New Hampshire