Week 3, Run 1

Here I am at the third and final week of training! I am feeling a little bit confident that I'm going to be able to complete the half-marathon in the required time of 2:30. I am able to run between 9:30 and 10:00 miles over my 4 mile runs, which leaves a decent safety margin under the 11:26 pace required to break 2:30. This week, my plan is to run one fairly long run, and one short run later in the week.

Saturday, August 29, 2009
This morning I did a fairly easy bike ride from my house on the West side, to the Pride Soccer Complex on the east side. This was a 15.5 mile ride, with just a few hills along the way.

Sunday, August 30, 2009
This morning was cloudy and a bit drizzly, but I met two friends to do a ride at the Air Force Academy, just north of town. The drizzle cleared up for us, then we rode around the Academy on a 22 mile course with some hills.

My original plan was to run on Sunday as well, but the weather was not cooperating, so I decided to defer my long run until Monday at lunch time.

Monday, August 31, 2009
At lunch time, I drove to America the Beautiful Park the start line for the half-marathon a week from today. My hope was to go 8 miles along the course, as long as I felt OK. It was a fairly warm day, and I had no water along the course, but I did drink about 16 ounces just before I started running. Running today gave me 3 full days off from running. Just like last Thursday after 3 days rest, I felt pretty good from the start. I ran fairly slowly the first half mile, then got into a fairly good pace, under 9:30 for several miles. I decided early on that the full 8 miles was achievable. I took my first walk break at the 1.5 mile mark, then took a 1 minute walk break each mile after that. My calves have been feeling completely fine the last few runs. I have gradually altered my running style, moving slightly away from the pure Pose running method, and moving towards my previous running style, based on "Chi Running". The styles are actually very similar, but Chi uses less of a hamstring lift at the end of the stride. I am being cognizant about landing on my fore foot, which forces the calf muscle to absorb some of the pounding, but its not enough to hurt me. I am also focusing on using as little energy as possible. I try to focus on applying energy to forward movement, keeping my body from "jumping" in the vertical direction as much as possible.

I covered the first 4 miles in 39:00. I held that pace for the next two miles, then began to feel tired in the legs. It is likely that the tiredness was partially a result of not having fluids on the run, and simply running out of internal fuel. Nevertheless, my pace dropped off to the point where I finished the 8 miles in 1:20, exactly a 10 minute pace. I had slowed down to about a 10:30 pace that last mile.

As I formulate my strategy for next Monday, I have one of two options in mind. The first one is to simply try to hit a 10 minute pace, mile after mile. The second option is to try and run faster in the first half of the race, which is very slightly up hill, then just hold on for the return trip. I am leaning in this direction, to build up a time buffer so that I can slow down if needed towards the end of the race, and still break 2:30 without killing myself. Also, there is a pacer running to hit 2:00 exactly. In the back of my mind, I would love to keep up with this pacer (9:09 per mile pace) on the way out, then just hold on coming back in. I feel that pace is something I could do, but I would have to scale back or cut out my walk breaks on the first half of the race. Each walk break costs me roughly 30 seconds. So the 9:45 pace for my first 4 miles today could fairly easily be a 9:15 pace, at which point I'm very close to the 9:09 pace. This probably is a bit too fast for me, but I'll see how I feel on race day.

After today's run, my knees are feeling no worse than my last 4 mile run. My legs are tired, my left knee feels just very slightly swollen, and my right knee is just a little bit sore. I have concluded that 3 days rest for my knees is probably what I want to shoot for before Monday's race. I need to get one more run in later this week. I'll shoot for 2 days rest (Tuesday, Wednesday), then a 4 mile run for my second run of the week, then 3 days rest for the knees. I will probably ride my bike on the first of those rest days, then take 2 days completely off. I have found that taking two days off before my other triathlon/multi-sport events leaves me feeling nicely rested on race day, without losing any conditioning.