Incredible memories and running nostalgia evoked by music.

I just finally setup my old desktop computer for the first time since leaving Baltimore since my laptop is temporarily unusable. I had never ripped the majority of my music collection to my laptop due to sheer laziness and just copied like the top 40 or 50 albums I was listening to at the time when I put the most recent hard-drive in it. I was browsing through my music collection on here and found a tremendous amount of old stuff that I used to listen to while running in Baltimore that I haven't heard in months or even years and I am truly shocked by what this is evoking in me.

Discovering some of this music is just awesome to me and it brings back some of the happiest memories of my running career, if not my life. It sounds crazy, but some of the times when I've been most at peace with the universe and just content in general have come from runs through the "Dreaded" Druid Hills, Robert E Lee Park, or Loch Raven Reservoir.

Jason Becker's entire "Perspective" album, which he wrote from a wheel chair completely paralyzed with ALS, a particularly special album to me even apart from any running connections, brings back vivid imagery from long runs through Loch Raven Reservoir, a beautiful place that I wish I had spent more time at.

Dream Theater's "Honor Thy Father", from their prog metal masterpiece "Train of Thought", reminds me of the struggle of pushing my way through the Gilman Trail on 5k-race-pace pickups (of course after hammering the Loyola hill on North Charles and looping around Gilman High School). That album was definitely not one to ever leave my immediate collection, but it's interesting that after listening to some of my other older music from my collection and I start thinking about old runs through Baltimore, memories come back with this as well. One specific section reminds me of one specific part of one specific run on one specific part of the trail, late at night in a state of combined agony and bliss despite being with nothing but my shoes, shorts, headlamp, and music.

Symbyosis' "Famine" from "On the Wings of Pheonix", one of my technical metal guilty pleasures, brings back memories of dodging the cracks in the sidewalks along North Charles just after crossing West University while prepping for a "big" climbs up the hill in front of that ritzy private middle school just up the road and then in front of Loyola while doing a very hard 7 mile tempo run that I was especially fond of.

Between the Buried and Me's entire "Colors" album, an undefineably odd masterpiece, reminds me of the loop around Fort McHenry and the sheer terror of crossing the 10 mile mark in the 2007 Baltimore Marathon way too fast in somewhere around 65 minutes and wondering how I was possibly going to hold on for another 16.2 miles (my first ever Boston Qualifier in 3:04, so I guess I managed to survive at least somewhat).

Not all of the music connects to good times though. I remember listening to Rachmaninoff's irreconcilably despondent 2nd Symphony, 3rd Movement (at least to me) while crushing my body through the poorly cleared, thorny, and rocky back half of Robert E Lee park during a very long trail-hopping run, tears absolutely exploding from my eyes during one of the few times in recent life that I truly let myself absolutely break down as nothing in my life seemed to be going as I had anticipated.

On a lighter note, Origin's absurdly heavy "Informis Infinitas Inhumanitas" super-death-metal album reminds me of the one time I was crazy enough to bring music this fast (on someone else's recommendation) to an 8-10 mile run with 10x60 second extremely-high-effort hill repeats right in the middle on the nasty double-switch-back hill in Druid Hill Park (if you've ever run the road loop circling the zoo starting on the side by the cemetery mini-car thing, whatever it is, you know EXACTLY what hill I'm talking about).

Veni Domine's highly epic prog rock "Last Letter from Earth" from their album "Spiritual Wasteland" reminds me of doing an easy long run along Lake Avenue and around the outside of Robert E Lee Park, up into Towson along Jappa Road, and back on the incredibly sketchy York Road, which had me no longer running "easy" by any means and looking over my shoulder every 30 seconds or so.

One of my most cherished runs in my entire time in Baltimore was a crazy 40 mile trainer I did from North Baltimore to Washington DC, almost entirely along route one. I contemplated this run for the longest time before I got the balls up to do it once, but that one time was enough to build some incredible memories. The mindset in 6 1/2 hours of training is not whatsoever similar to the mindset in long 6+ hour races and I completely phased out of reality and forgot that I was even running for literally 30 minutes at one point. However, I could never forget listening to Megadeth's highly satiric "United Abominations" title track while descending a long gradual downhill on Route 1 shortly after buying Hawaiian Punch, water, and a Snickers bar at convenience store, convincing the store clerk that my Hammer Nutrition HEED (a pure white powder in a ziplock bag that was to be mixed with the water) was cocaine.

Last and perhaps most most vivid are the memories from Shadow Gallery's beautiful prog rock concept albums "Tyranny" and "Room V", which follow each other in the same story line, and which I nearly always listened to in succession. Hearing either of these reminds me of an eerie yet serene run through Robert E Lee Park shortly before the setting of the sun, looking out over the lake to see a beautiful yet incredibly unnerving mist settling. I felt completely effortless and nearly out of body, yet I was in a terrified enough mindset (after all, a stripper had very recently been murdered in this park) to be running with one earbud out and nearly freaking out to the drone of a lightrail passing into the decaying horizon a mile or 2 away.

What does running mean to me? I love to race and respectably fast times over distances previously unfathomable to me can be a reward for the hard work I put in, but nothing compares with the memories I've built up during that work; I wouldn't trade those for anything. It's really bizarre that the simple act of using a computer that I don't normally use can evoke such a palette of emotion and due to the highly reflective mood I've been in for the past few days, I'm glad that I plugged it in today and spent much of the evening just sitting back and remembering the good times I had while running in Baltimore.



A view I frequently saw at Loch Raven Reservoir.



The now structurally unstable and literally crumbling entrance to Robert E Lee Park that I used several times a week for years.




Just about to start up the climb past Loyola College on North Charles Street.

Western States 2010

I just got into the 2010 Western States 100, so I will be running it. This will be a really interesting and tough double if I also get into Badwater since the 2 races are so close together (16 days apart), so if I get to do both, I'll have to take it a little easy at Western, whatever that means in a 100. hah.

I stress-fractured my foot.

So, I apparently stress-fractured my foot, likely due to the pounding on pure roads for all but the very first and last tiny bit at helen klein. I had it x-rayed and they found nothing, but it still hurt nearly 2 weeks later, so I got it checked again and they found new bone growth (but no crack since you apparently have to hit it at just the right angle to see the crack), which means i had fractured it. IE, it's been broken for around 3 1/2 weeks now and I'm supposed to rest completely for around 4 qwwka after diagnosis which was 1 1/2weeks ago, mostly since I didn't entirely rest for the first 2 weeks after they convinced me that it was just a sprain or something. Either way, my fall racing schedule basically didn't happen. No half marathon last weekend and no Vegas marathon next weekend. It's definitely getting better and based on the current rate of progress, I expect the discomfort to be entirely gone in regular walking and daily activities within a week.

I should be completely healed and able to start running again in around 2 1/2 weeks, which hopefully gives me enough time to throw enough base back in to my legs to go at least 100 miles in 24 hours in a new year's eve 24 hour run down in Phoenix. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, but I'm going to try. There's no better way to build my base up quickly then to have a few weeks to do TONS of slow but long mileage and then test myself in an attempt to do 100 miles and then whatever else I can manage in a 24 hour period.

I'll probably not really post much until I'm healed, but things aren't all that bad I guess. I was getting into pretty sick shape, so I'm obviously extremely disappointed that I couldn't run my fall marathon, which I imagine would've knocked 10+ minutes off my pr, but a good bit of rest will be useful going into a long string of races and hard training that will basically have to last from February until July.

In the mean time, I've been swimming for at least a half an hour 5 or 6 days a week so I will be able to fulfill my obligation of completing an Ironman Triathlon in exchange for Ryan McGrath running 100 miles. Additionally, I've been lifting pretty hard. I've got a 3 day split in the gym of chest/triceps, back/biceps, and shoulders (never done any legs since it interferes pretty severely with running if I work hard at it at all). My main focus has been on chest/triceps lately and I seem to be gaining faster than normal now that I can't run for a little while. When I came out to Utah in June, I was decline-pressing a max of about 180 and as of today it's up to 260 (I typically decline press rather than flat bench to get as much chest definition as possible with the minimum body weight gain). It looks like I'm on track to hit my yearly goal of 275, which would be pretty cool. I'm sure no-one that runs cares about my lifting goals, but it's still pretty fun to work hard in the gym and see the numbers go up. Lifting and adding extra mass to my body obviously isn't beneficial to running, but my body fat has decreased since I started lifting pretty hard last year, so I really haven't added that much overall weight and I've never noticed it affecting my running at all, so I'm going to keep doing it.

So yeah, foot = fractured, but I'm not going crazy about it. That's about it for now.

A few other new things... (sort of injury, cross training, etc)

After HK50 (or HK51.5 as I have been calling it... haha...), I felt pretty recovered after 2 days, so I started running again last monday with a short run on Monday and Tuesday. I pushed way too hard on Wednesday, warming up for a couple miles and then hitting an extremely hilly 7 mile course (over 100' gain and loss/mile average) at 5000' in about 7:00 for the first mile and then 6:00/mile after that, which kind of beat me up since my body was still somewhat in recovery mode. Thursday I took it easy for 8 miles, but on Friday, I woke up with a fairly sore right foot.

Walking around on it on Friday, it felt generally disagreeable, but not anywhere near enough to keep me from running. I jogged from my house to the University field house to do a quick 8x400 workout on the very tight unbanked 211 meter indoor track and felt fine on the way, doing the exactly 3 mile route I take in just over 19 minutes with extreme ease (average heart rate 155) due to the fairly huge downhill from my house to campus. Starting in on the 400s, though, my foot started to feel a little finicky. Wanting to do them all in around 69 or 70, I did the first one in 70, feeling fine. On the 2nd one, my foot started to get irritated and I had to let up a little on the very sharp turns, so I ended up hitting a 71. On the 3rd one, it hurt a little more and I had to let up even more for a 72. On the 4th one, the pain became extreme and I nearly walked my way through the turns to hit a 73. I decided after that that something must be seriously wrong, so I quit the workout before serious damage could be done. I sat down and massaged my foot for about 15 minutes, debated asking someone I knew for a ride home, but decided not to be "needy" and that I could walk the 3 miles home. That proved to be a rather bad idea as walking 3 miles on it ended up being rather painful. When I was sitting there massaging it, someone had said "better make sure you don't get a stress fracture with all that running!" and I started to realized while walking home and experiencing pretty bad pain that I might have one. When I got home, I looked up the symptoms for a stress fracture and realized that I had everything except the bruise.

I went to bed and woke up on Saturday with a huge purple/red bruise over my sore spot, which seemed like really bad news. I took Sat/Sun off running and hobbled around in pain all weekend before Sunday night, when I started to realize that it wasn't QUITE as sore as before. I woke up on Monday, feeling slightly better, and went into the doctor, who x-rayed it and found absolutely no evidence of even a slight hairline crack. His official diagnosis was that it was something tendon-related, maybe a sprain. Honestly, that kind of sounds like crap to me since the bone itself was pretty sore, but who knows...

As of today (wednesday), I'm feeling mostly better but still a bit sore. I'm going to try a very short run tonight and do it on something very hilly that will keep my pace super slow (probably just up and down a small mountain for like 3 miles total running).





I've picked up swimming in the last few days as a means of getting some cardio work in and found it to be incredibly tough (not to mention that my triceps, rear deltoids, and hamstrings, are all getting pretty sore). My sense of pace is pretty much terrible and I can't really seem to do more than 100 yards at a time without getting my heart rate up in the 180s and having to rest a minute, so I've just been doing about 1000 yards a day, but I can feel that it's working my body relatively hard. I guess I'm going to have to learn to swim at a legitimate effort level at some point if i want to actually be able to do an Ironman next year as part of the "I have do an Ironman, you have to run 100 miles" bet I have going with Ryan Mcgrath. haha... Honestly, I think we're both a little bit screwed for this...

Totally late race recap for Helen Klein 50

Race recap from Helen Klein 50 (51.5).

Flew out to Sacramento for the HK 50 on Halloween. Before the race they announced that it would be "a little bit" long due to construction that they had found out about 2 days before the race, causing a last minute course re-route. I'm pretty sure I had heard someone say that it was supposed to be .25 miles long, but I was in the bathroom when they were announcing stuff, so I never heard the official scoop. Anyway, talking to 6 or 7 people with GPS watches at the finish, everyone had it between 51.24 and 51.8x, so it was probably around 51.5.

Anyway, the race started out and Chikara Omine, the Japanese-American 50-mile superstar just took off at somewhere just a little above 6:00/mile, IE a totally ridiculous pace for 50 miles for anyone other than him. No-one else wanted to go fast so I settled into 2nd for the first couple miles. The race was on real trails for the first 2 miles or so and we hit the first aid station when my watch said a little over 3 miles (though their splits were instantly off and it said something absurd like 2.2 miles).

After doing 7:30s for few miles, a couple guys caught me and passed me, which kind of made me feel a bit relieved, since I was kind of worried about being a fair amount ahead of everyone other than Chikara. After 5 miles, I went off course for .1 miles, which really pissed me off. There was a ribbon going into the woods, but I guess it was from another race or something. I had been pretty sure that the race never touched "trail" trail after the first 2 miles, but I knew there was some sort of construction, so I had guessed it may have been a detour. Anyway, when I got back to the correct parkway, a couple other guys had caught me, one of them being Sean Lang, who apparently had run probably just slightly ahead of me for a good chunk of Cascade Crest 100 until I totally blew up at 76 and he continued in to finish in the low 21s (me barely surviving my way to a high 26s). Sean had done 6:50 at American River, and I thought this course would be faster, so I figured running near him seemed smart. We continuned to go around 7:30s for awhile and eventually we found ourselves running in a pack in 4th to 8th with Sean, 2 guys he knew, and Adrian Shipley, a recent college grad who had run some totally sick 10k times collegiately (31:40 PR). After maybe 15 miles, Adrian and I decided that Sean and crew were pushing slightly too hard so we let them go and continued at 7:30 pace or so.

The aid stations mileages continued to be horribly off, fluctuating between too long and too short (for example, at one point, the markers between stations stated somewhere right around 3.0 miles, but my watch put at nearly 5). On the other hand, the aid that said 21.1 or 21.2 to the turnaround (which was supposed to be at 24.7 due to an extra .6 miles run past the beginning of the course on the way back) took around 15 minutes to run, so it was only 2 miles or so. In total, though, the marker came up as 25.55 on my watch instead of 24.7, which mentally did not help things. When running at a relatively decent pace for many many hours, each extra mile tacked on to the course mentally hurts quite a bit, so I was not excited about the fact that it would be 51.1 total just to get back to the start plus a bit more after that. I don't recall the exact time that Adrian and I hit the halfway point, but after standing around eating for maybe 2 minutes, we went back and hit the marathon in around or slightly under 3:20.

Still feeling pretty good, but certainly hurting somewhat from running a marathon in 3:20 (which is over 1:00/mile off my PR, but still not like a totally easy jog), we soon caught up to Sean, who was starting to suffer. I believe one person had passed us in the first half after Sean and crew took off, so when we re-passed Sean, we were running 7th and 8th.

Coming up to about 30 miles, I started to let myself think about how much it was going to suck to do 20+ miles more at this pace and I just started to mentally unravel. At mile 31, I had believed that I was within a quarter mile of the station due to the faulty markers, so I told Adrian I was just going to walk it off to the station to stretch my legs and he said he'd be at the station for probably a few minutes, so I'd just catch up to him. I'd forgotten that this was the supposed 3 mile station-to-station section that was actually way too long, so I ended up walking a mile before I got there since I kept thinking I must almost be there. When I got to the station, I was mentally starting to break, so I sat down for 12 minutes and drank a couple cups of sprite and a can of mountain dew. Sean came through the station still running (just a bit slower) and left before I did, leaving me in 9th place. Leaving the station, I still felt totally mentally down about the rest of the race and walked another 1/2 mile or so, at which point I just suddenly flipped out on myself. I literally started screaming at myself while walking down the parkway and got so pissed at myself that I got running again.

Realizing that an extremely hard effort for the rest of the race could still get me under 7 hours for 50 miles, I started to push once again. I knew I couldn't hit that 7:30 pace for the remainder and it would kill my race if I tried, but I settled into an 8:30 or so pace, which I held for about the rest of the race.

Despite slowing, I started to catch other runners soon. I eventually passed Sean and 2 other guys, getting me up to 6th by mile 40 or so. By mile 40, since I had started to take a little more time in the aid stations (maybe 2 minutes or so every few miles) I had to do 10 miles in 80 minutes to go under 7 hours. I realized this probably wasn't going to happen, but kept pushing to see what I could do. Everything after 31 was pretty painful since I had mentally broken for a little while in there, but by mile 40, my legs were starting to hurt and my feet were just getting tired of the continual pounding on pavement.

I caught back up to Adrian somewhere around 45 or 46 since he had apparently just crashed after 42 miles or so. I knew Sean wasn't far back, so I didn't really get to stop to make pleasentries. From about 40 on, Sean had been running slightly slower than me, but not really stopping in the stations for much time at all and he would repass me when I would stop for a minute or 2 to eat salt, food, etc. By mile 48 or so I thought I had him beat and 5th place secured, but a long hill from 49 to 49.5 got the best of me and I walked a bit at the end. Turning around at the top of the hill, I saw him jogging up and I saw that he saw me, so I took off as fast as I could (at that point about 7:00 minute pace). I kept running hard, but he had seen me walking and realized he could catch me, so, shortly after my watch said 50.00 miles in 7:08, he passed me.

I was pretty pissed at myself for allowing that to happen, but I knew 6th was mine and just didn't care what kind of time I ran for 51.x miles since I had split out the 50.0 on my watch already, so I just slowed down and jogged in to the end, finishing in 7:21.

When I finished, I found out that Sean had won the 18-29 category and gotten a really sweet hand-made clock with an award plaque on it while I got the 2nd place age group award very similar to the generic finisher award (cool, but definitely nowhere near the clock...).

All in all, the big problem was that I went out too fast. 6th overall and 7:08 for the 50 split isn't terrible, but if I had gone out slower, I probably could've gone at least 30 minutes faster if I hadn't been so stupid about my pace at the beginning. I lost 23 minutes just between 31 and 31.5 when I walked 1.5 miles in 11 minutes slower than it would've taken to run it and sat down for 12 minutes, so just chopping that out would've put me at 6:45, just 5 minutes from the coveted 8:00/mile 50 mile.

Karl Meltzer, my coach, had encouraged me not to be so aggressive as to go out in 7:30s, but I figured that the smart plan to be able to hit around a 6:30 was to go out at 6:15 50 mile pace since I'd have to stop a bit more in the 2nd half undoubtedly. However, I think that if I had gone out in 7:50s, I probably could've held on. If things had started to come undone around 40-41instead of 30-31, the prospect of only 10 miles remaining probably wouldn't have been enough to mentally break me down to the point of walking. In my marathon PR, for example, I started feeling pretty crappy 10 miles from the finish, so I know it's doable to hold on for 10 miles at the end of a race without sacrificing much of the pace at all.

I'm not sure when I'll have the opportunity to do another fast 50 miler (probably not until this same race next fall since I probably won't be able to run either the Jed Smith Road 50 or American River 50 next year), but I'm pretty confident I can run a fair amount faster the next time, especially if it is a year from now. Maybe at that point, 7:30/mile pace will be a feasible plan...

A few really solid workouts this week.

I've had a really solid string of runs since my last posting, so I thought I'd post them.

Wednesday last week: 10x400. First pure 400s workout since high school probably, but I can already tell a difference since doing it. I expected to average about 75s, but I averaged 72s. I did the first one in 70 since I wasn't paying attention to splits and then did most of the rest in 73s and then hit the last 2 in 71 and 68. I felt that I could've easily done 15 at my 72 average, but the schedule just called for 10 and I guess the point of a 400 workout isn't to totally trash my body. Having a little more speed than expected, especially on a crappy non-banked indoor track with sharp turns that probably cost me some time was definitely a good surprise.

Thursday last week: 10k. Did 10k in 37:50. Doesn't sound fast, but the course was at around 4700' elevation average and had over 600' of gain and drop, so it was extremely hilly. Didn't quite go race effort, but it still translates to an equivalent performance better than my atrocious PR of 35:08 (though when I ran my 35:08 i was capable of sub 34 if I hadn't run like a frickin retard and split the first 2 miles in 10:15...)

Friday last week: 10 miles in Denver since I was there for the Rachmaninoff Festival. Fairly hilly, but less than Salt Lake City, the equivalent of up and down 3/4 of the Boston Marathon's Heartbreak Hill each mile, IE WAAAAAY easier than the horrendous hills I hit on the trails here. Not a big effort, but put in 6:30s. Also, interesting to note that I walked approximately 12 miles on Friday since I had a hotel 4.5 miles out of downtown and walked the roundtrip in addition to walking around exploring the city for awhile... haha... Surprisingly, I felt that walking that far was somewhat strenuous and came to the conclusion that running a marathon anywhere above 7 minutes per mile would probably be less painful than walking one since I'm just not used to walking so far and it actually strains my quads after 12 miles. haha...

Saturday: no running, my off day, but walked about 10 miles, my legs felt awfully bad for walking that far.

Sunday: My pained quads recovered quickly, probably thanks largely to the 3-4 grams of hydroxymethylbutyrate I take daily. I did a 16 ish mile trail run (by 16-ish I mean that I had it logged as 16, but I think my GPS cuts it short in a few wooded sections, so it may have been a bit longer) in 1:58 with 2600' feet of gain. This translates to about 6:30s @ flat sea level, but the trail is pretty darn technical and has a lot of rocks, so the effort level for 6:30s is much higher here. I was keeping my heart rate right around 170 the whole way, but it dropped on a handful of really technical rocky downhills that were impossible to run at that effort due to the hazard of tripping involved with running that fast, so I averaged 168. I'm looking to be able to average right around the magic 170 at Vegas, so being able to hold it there for 2 hours without trashing myself with over a month and a half to train still was a very good sign. When I finished this run, I declared to my roommate that I thought it was the single best trail run I've ever had in Salt Lake City.

Today, Monday: 7 miles. I said I'd go easy and I did, well, for the first 5 miles at least. I ran on a really good treadmill that I actually believe is credible (in the past, specific paces between here and a track at the same elevation have matched exactly for heart rate values). I did the first mile in 7:00 flat and it felt like a total joke, so I did the next 4 in 6:30s (I was running at a 6:31 and just cranked it every once in awhile to knock a second off each mile). By mile 5, which I hit in 33:00, I was getting bored with the super easy pace (not to mention that my heart rate was barely at 160, which is literally the effort I was able to put in for just over 9 hours in my super tough last 50 miler), I ran mile 6 in 5:59, which surprisingly only brought me to a 172 heart rate. As you recall, last week, a 172 was getting 6:17s or something at this elevation, but I literally feel like my strength is multiplying on a daily basis. I could tell that my legs were running really fast at this point but it just felt insanely effortless. Anyway, after mile 6, it still felt pretty easy, so I cranked up the pace some more for the last mile. I was going to do it in somewhere around 5:30, but I just kept upping it and finished the last .2 at 4:40/mile, so I did mile 5 in 5:21 for a total of 42:20 or an average of 6:20 per mile. I had been wondering if my heart rate monitor was slightly off, but I got up to 190 in the final bit of the run and while it felt very strenuous, I was definitely not maxed, so I believe it actually was accurate and 6:31s really did correspond to a sub-160 effort. Oh, and yes, the treadmills I run on here actually go faster than 12 mph... They actually go to 15 mph, so when I feel like cranking out a 4:00 mile on a treadmill, I can do it... haha... Either way, going harder at the end of a 7 mile easy run doesn't seem detrimental to me. I did it for a short enough period of time that my legs don't have to recover or anything and I'll still get to reap some rewards from working on my speed.

One other note, the fact that I held a 161 for my last trail 50 and that 6:30s on flat corresponds sub 160 BPM heart rate does NOT mean I'm going to go run 6:30s for 50 miles. (My current marathon PR is only 6:36/mile, so that should be obvious.) I guess what that means is that my cardiovascular system is capable of doing a 50 that fast, it's just that my legs are nowhere near strong enough to withstand that pace for so long. On the trails, I'm not running as fast, so my legs don't really break down the same way and I'm able to withstand a much higher effort level and cardiovascular taxation. I've talked to bikers who can hold 180+ heart rates for 4+ hours, which would be unfathomable for running, but it's simply due to the fact that the bikers aren't pounding their legs into oblivion on asphalt. Trail running is the same thing. The insane hilliness on a course like Mt Dis 50 prevents one from running fast and therefore prevents the legs from getting destroyed (given good hillwork of course), but the effort level remains pretty high for a very long period of time.

Some interesting heart rate info...

So, today I had an 8 mile run that wasn't supposed to be at a moderate effort, not going anaerobic, but not going easy. I decided to go 8 miles on flat at 6:15s at 5000', which I seemed to remember being about 6:07s at sea level, which is pretty close to the marathon pace I'd have to run to do a 2:40. It turns out, it corresponds to 6:02s on sea level, in fact about a 2:38 pace, according to the Jack Daniels Calculator that I am so fond of. I've figured that if I have a great day in December (assuming I continue to train well), I could probably hold an average of 169 or 170 for the duration of 26.2 miles. 6:15s at 5000', similar to 6:02s at sea level, got me an average HR of somewhere between 171 and 172 today, so I'm cardiovascularly right around being able to run a 2:41 or so right now if I can hold up the 169 or 170 the whole way. My legs probably can't hold up on roads well enough to run that right now, but I have 2 months and that's plenty of time to get my legs fully from trail form to road form.

My short distance speed and my ability to keep a lower heart rate at a fast pace is definitely getting better as well, which is a good sign. I did a 4.8 mile tempo on roads the other day (was supposed to be 5, I guess I'm cheating... haha...). The run had very serious hills the first 2 being straight uphill with 600' gain in 14:30, and from 2 to 4.8 rolling downhill (net 600' downhill, but about 250' up, 850' down) in 14:50. Obviously, despite the rolling nature, this is going to be faster than flat, but the 5000' elevation still costs me time. The last 2.8 corresponds to 15:20 on flat at sea level, or just under a 17:00 5k. This doesn't sound fast, but my heart rate averaged only about 177 and never crossed 180 except for the last 1/4 of a mile or so when I picked up my pace to 4:40/mile on the heavily downhill finish. In an actual race, I'd average WAY higher than 177 (actually averaged 191 in a 10k), so the fact that 177 puts me only 25 seconds off pace for a 5k PR during the last 2.8 miles of a run means that I could destroy my marathon PR on a good course right now.

Back to thinking about the marathon... I think with some good training focused on roads, I should be on track to be able to get right around that 2:40 point by December, though I'm sure it will take everything I have to race a marathon in 2:40 this year. I think my half marathon I'm running 2 weeks out from the race should give me a good idea, but I really think it should be possible at this point.