Monday, August 29, 2011

Shake out .... shake down in the 30K

In between my two big races I have three weeks to transistion. Week one was recovery, week two light running and this tempo race and week three taper week. I think this is much nicer than training all year for two races. Sort of train knock out one rest a bit and then hit the second after a short recovery. I am nowhere an elite runner and running for fun I think gives me the chance to do this. If I was going all out I would probably need an entire month to recover.

Well this impromptu race was my first 30K.  The weather was hot and humid right from the start. To be safe I wore my ultimate direction waistpack. This armed me two 16 oz bottles, s-caps, some elxir and ginger chews. Never know what will turn up so why not play it safe. About an hour into the run and a nice sweat rate I started my first s-cap. I was holding a nice even 8:30 per mile pace. Making sure I could cover some distance and be ready to run next weekend was all I wanted to achieve.

The course starts off with a nice paved four mile route through the small town of Milford. After that the course turns into a wide dirt road with good tree coverage. The hills are a mix of some long gradual and some short steep. Ideal for a training! Around mile 13 you come back through the city for a few short miles then turn back on to the dirt road to close out the last few miles. This is where my steady pace paid off. Many people were shuffling the last four miles. Lots of them soaked through their outfits from sweat. Thanks to proper hydration and salt caps I eased on by a few dozen closing out the last mile in 7:33!

In the end I finished 2:41:30. Post run celebrated with Honeybee, Tumbleweed and some others. Grabbing a burger, several drinks and a massage. Well worth the race entry. Next year I think I might do the 30K bike verison. This I would go all out to see how I would do. Especially in this course being so easy to pass on I think I could do ok.


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