The Triing Lizard

Monday, January 23, 2006

18 miles! I ran 18 miles this weekend! Well, actually 18.78 miles. My longest distance EVER. It was a journey. At the very beginning I was feeling like I was getting out of breath really quickly so after 30 minutes or so I decided that I was going to have to stop to pee. The road was fairly well travelled but I found a place where the side banked down steep enough that I could hide from the cars somewhat. It was the fastest I've ever peed in the woods! Once that was over I felt a lot better. I'm still doing all my training in my Maffetone zone since aerobic capacity is by far my biggest limiter in running and in triathlon. For the first 10 miles I know I could have run faster. When my HR monitor went off to let me know that I was out of my zone I would be surprised and a little annoyed that I would have to walk for a while. But after mile 10 that all changed - I started to get really fatigued. It was the reverse problem - my HR monitor would go off telling me that I was too low but I wouldn't want to start running again. At that point I think it was my legs that were telling me to stop. I had also reached a part of the course where it was going to be an uphill climb for about 2 miles (with a brief 1/2 mile reprieve in the middle). So I trudged along, listening to Jeff telling me stories and keeping us entertained. He was such a good sport, walking with me when my HR monitor went off, and starting to jog again as soon as my HR had come down. I knew that if he had gone alone that he would have finished the course about an hour before we actually got home (though he told me that wasn't the case, that the run was hard even for him). What a sweetie. So we hit the really steep part of the climb. No possibility of running, it was an uphill trudge, felt like we were walking up that hill for about 30 minutes when it was probably closer to 10. It was at this point when I knew that making it home would be about mentally not thinking about the exhaustion and pain that I was experiencing. I had 2 miles left. I had been bummed about a couple of our splits (I had a map with me so I could guestimate where the mile markers were), 16:10 and 14:50. We had missed an out and back turn around and taken a detour, so I knew a couple of the splits were going to be off but the 14:50 had occurred during the uphill section and I knew the distance was pretty close to being accurate. But in the end our pace was about 11:53 per mile which really isn't bad for me while staying within Maffetone. Total time: 3:43:34. So the plan for the marathon is to run Maffetone (or fairly close to it) for the first 20 miles and then race the last 10K. Goal time: 4:45.

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