Training Log Archive: RLShadow

Ridgewalk "14 mile" (actually 15.5 per GPS), in Wellsville.

Very tough run! Plus I didn't really run it that smart. I underestimated the difficulty of the course and because of that, ran too hard from around mile 1.5 to mile 10 or so. This meant I was in pretty bad shape for the last 5 miles. When comparing the three challenging races I did since August (Pike's Peak, Rochester Marathon, and now this race), I definitely was struggling more at the end with this one than with the others. The others, I felt I knew enough about the course to set a reasonable, conservative early pace, which wasn't the case with this one.

I did the first mile or so with Anne, which was a good warmup and on a fairly easy section of the course (uphill, but rather gentle incline, and on a lightly used road rather than a trail, so no issues with footing). When I took on a faster pace than Anne wanted to do, I think I overdid it and didn't take into account how many very difficult miles lay ahead.

I caught up with Patty Lyons around mile 7 or 8, and ran with her (more or less, sometimes she was ahead a bit, less often I was ahead, sometimes we were side by side) for the next 3 miles or so, then the tough course and the aggressive early pace caught up with me and I couldn't stay with her anymore. She ran a very good last section of the race, beating me by 3-4 minutes.

All in all, a very nice race; scenic course, a lot of variety, from easy trails to very technical, and a great day weather-wise. I'd definitely like to do it again, hopefully running a smarter race next time.

PS: Injury report: I didn't think this was worth commenting on, but as the evening progresses, things are feeling a bit worse. I took two falls during this race. One was particularly embarrassing -- it was near the beginning of the race, when there looked like a particularly tricky part of the trail, so I decided to walk through it. But I still managed to fall down, while walking! Got a little ding on my hand and on my knee, nothing major but it kind of shook me up. Then later, while running near Patty (a little bit ahead of her), I tripped and fell on an innocent looking stretch of vehicle track. I tucked and rolled rather than put my hand out, and must have landed moderately hard on my hip although I didn't specifically notice it at the time. After the race, my hip was a little tender, and right now at 10:30 pm it is more than tender. I don't think any major damage was done, but I suspect it will keep me from running for a few days.

C • On my schedule for next year 3

Ellison Wetlands trails, with Anne. Hilly run but easy pace.

C • Car Break-ins at Wetland 5

Easy afternoon run in the Park Ave. area.

Short, easy run in the Union Hill area, on my way back from picking up a used part for my car. Only real point of a run this short and easy was to do a second break-in run on new shoes.

Long run, with Anne, on Rt 104 bike path. Out to about halfway between Phillips Rd and Salt Rd, and return.

Doing a long run with someone else is a heck of a lot better than by yourself, but unfortunately my speed and Anne's aren't real compatible. Using a pace calculator: http://mcmillanrunning.com/mcmillanrunningcalculat... one can enter the time of a recent race, and it will tell you things like what your time should be for other race distances, what your 400 meter interval time should be, what your long run pace should be, etc.

Entering 3:53 for my marathon and 4:49 for Anne's gives a long run pace for me of 9:24-10:24 per mile, and for Anne, 11:32-12:32 per mile. Not even close to being an overlap. So running long runs with her is good for me (because it gets me running slower than I otherwise might, but still within my theoretical range), but bad for her because the pace we wind up running is faster than what she supposedly should be running, by quite a bit. And she was having a knee problem in the last few miles, which might have been because she was going faster than she should have been.

Not sure what the solution is ...