18 Miler This Morning
I met Assynt Macleod and Brian King at the end of my driveway this morning at 5:30 AM for what was to be an 18 mile long-run.
We never discussed pace but all settled into a groove that felt relatively brisk for a long-run but not something I thought would be difficult to maintain. At 5.43 miles we passed up our first opportunity for water or a bathroom break since no one needed either. At seven miles we passed up our 2nd chance at water because again, no one needed any. This is an out-and-back course and there's no water between mile seven and the turnaround at mile nine, which meant we wouldn't have another shot at hydration until we got back to the seven mile mark, which would be 11 miles into the run. That stop is an elementary school with two cold water fountains. I had also gone last night and planted nearly frozen Gatorade by the school.
So when we got to the school, eleven miles into the run, we were thirsty. Assynt and I took a GU and we all drank our fill. The break lasted three minutes exactly and we were off to finish the final seven miles. With 5.43 miles to go we passed the park with water fountains and bathrooms but none of us felt like we needed it so we crossed over into the point of no return (or point of no more water until the finish, unless you count my son's elementary school one mile from the finish and you'd have to be desperate to stop there with only a mile to go).
Up until the three minute water stop we were holding a 7:29 pace and I was hoping that in the final seven miles we might chip away at that three minute penalty we had on the clock, since I don't shut the watch off for breaks. With Brian leading the charge we made a pretty good stab at it. A final mile of 6:50 helped considerably but just about emptied my tank. The total time was 2:15:44, a 7:32 overall pace. Here are the mile splits:
8:00
7:37
7:23
7:27
7:18
7:18
7:30
7:24
7:27
7:29
10:31
7:30
7:23
7:14
7:05
7:12
7:07
6:50
These are my kind of long-runs - all business, not a lot of unnecessary stopping, a decent pace, and negative splits. If we can do this in mid-August I can only imagine what we'll do on those November 22 milers.
We never discussed pace but all settled into a groove that felt relatively brisk for a long-run but not something I thought would be difficult to maintain. At 5.43 miles we passed up our first opportunity for water or a bathroom break since no one needed either. At seven miles we passed up our 2nd chance at water because again, no one needed any. This is an out-and-back course and there's no water between mile seven and the turnaround at mile nine, which meant we wouldn't have another shot at hydration until we got back to the seven mile mark, which would be 11 miles into the run. That stop is an elementary school with two cold water fountains. I had also gone last night and planted nearly frozen Gatorade by the school.
So when we got to the school, eleven miles into the run, we were thirsty. Assynt and I took a GU and we all drank our fill. The break lasted three minutes exactly and we were off to finish the final seven miles. With 5.43 miles to go we passed the park with water fountains and bathrooms but none of us felt like we needed it so we crossed over into the point of no return (or point of no more water until the finish, unless you count my son's elementary school one mile from the finish and you'd have to be desperate to stop there with only a mile to go).
Up until the three minute water stop we were holding a 7:29 pace and I was hoping that in the final seven miles we might chip away at that three minute penalty we had on the clock, since I don't shut the watch off for breaks. With Brian leading the charge we made a pretty good stab at it. A final mile of 6:50 helped considerably but just about emptied my tank. The total time was 2:15:44, a 7:32 overall pace. Here are the mile splits:
8:00
7:37
7:23
7:27
7:18
7:18
7:30
7:24
7:27
7:29
10:31
7:30
7:23
7:14
7:05
7:12
7:07
6:50
These are my kind of long-runs - all business, not a lot of unnecessary stopping, a decent pace, and negative splits. If we can do this in mid-August I can only imagine what we'll do on those November 22 milers.
posted by Lance Collins at 7:59 AM
2 Comments:
Lance, wow! That's a great long run for the current temperatures. I am impressed..My aclimation is not very good as you very well saw..
Hello Lance,
Wow impressive!!. I think your blog is very helpful and believe that you could reach even more people if you joined Wellsphere's HealthBlogger Network (HBN). The HBN is comprised of over 2,600 of the web's best health writers and their content is read by over 6 million visitors a month at Wellsphere.com.
For more information about joining, please visit http://www.wellsphere.com/health-blogger or email me at hua [at] wellsphere [dot] com.
Best,
Hua
Director of Blogger Networks
Post a Comment
<< Home