Monday: Rest.
Tuesday: 4 miles. 32 minutes. Easy down Summit.
Wednesday: 7 miles. 50 minutes. Fartlek with 3 minutes on, 2 minutes float. A great, hard workout on my hilly loop. This was an exceptionally good workout. I felt fast, with a good amount of endurance and pep left in my legs at the end. It had me wishing that my race was shorter.
The only problem now is that I seem to be reaching the limit of this particular loop. I have nowhere else to go with limited stoplights. If I go down Summit, I hit a stoplight every half mile. I can't extend my hilly loop any farther without more stoplights. It may be time to find another option.
Thursday: 5 miles, 40 minutes. Easy run down summit after the workout on Wednesday.
Friday: 4.2 miles, 40 minutes. Either my heart was palpitating wildly, or my heart rate monitor was having severe issues. I am assuming the latter, because my heart rate didn't seem crazy when I tested it on my neck. This is not the first time I've had trouble with the heart rate monitor during my warm up. And I am not the only person to have this problem.
Suunto so far has not impressed me with their customer service or general quality. I have no extra money for one at the moment, but next time I purchase a GPS device, it won't be Suunto.
Saturday: Inadvertent rest day.
Sunday: 6.5 miles. 1 hour on the nose. Ran one loop of the River Gorge and added on a bit. For most of this loop, I was holding back, trying to run at a pace I could maintain for 8 hours.
On the bridges, though, it was another story. I dropped the pace there to 5:30-5:45 min/mile. I was pleasantly surprised by how (relatively) easy this felt. Again, it had me wishing that my race was a little shorter than 8 hours, but such is life.
Total: 27 miles. A good start to a taper.
As I am tapering, I guess it's about time to discuss my goals for the Icebox 480.
I see this race as an experiment. If I run the whole 8 hours, I have no doubt that this will be my longest and farthest run ever. Even if I don't, I have a good chance to beat my 50k PR. If I don't do that, I can experiment with fueling and pacing.
My goals, by tier.
"A" goal: run the equivalent of 2 sub-4 hour marathons back to back. This will be hard. Maybe not possible for me. But it's my goal over all others.
"B" goal: keep going for the entire 8 hours. This should let me break my PRs for distance and time.
"C" goal: break my 50k PR.
Finally, my biggest goal is to have fun with the race. I seem to do better when I enjoy my races and don't take them too seriously, and worse when I psych myself up and out too much. The UMTR peeps on Facebook describe this race as an "end of the season 8-hour party in the woods."
I'm in good shape. Mentally I'm doing well. My friends are coming out to watch me, driving 40 minutes to do so. And I have an all you can eat Brazilian BBQ to look forward to that night.
Sounds like a party
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