Week of 4-7-13: 78 miles / BOSHO Trail Marathon Report (Utah Valley Marathon Training Week 2 of 9)

This week revolved around the long run, which was the Bonneville Shoreline Trail Marathon.  I had a terrible race there last year (I had food poisoning), so I wanted to be fresh and ready to pop a good one. Saying I did so would be a gross understatement.

Sunday: 8 miles.  Very easy out and back, to and in city creek with Holly.  Not flat, but still, a hair over 8min pace.  Legs were tired after yesterday (17.5 miles with tons of climb, then two hours of hard effort skiing).  Going to sleep a lot tonight.

Monday: 12 miles, treadmill.   First 9 miles at 6:22 (roughly goal MP, ever so slightly slower), next 2 miles at 5:56, last mile at 5:33.  Last mile was pretty ridiculously hard. :)  Nice to get things going again marathon pace / tempo wise.

Tuesday: 8 miles.  With Holly.  To city creek, up the single track towards the radio towers, but not all the way there, down the front side, through downtown, back home.  Pace was casual (only got down to ~6:50, even on the steep downhills).  Fortunately, yesterday didn't really beat me up and after "only" doing 28 miles in the last 3 days, I'm feeling pretty rested again.

Wednesday: 10 miles.  AM run!  To Kevin's, to Liberty, 3 x mile @ Kevin's sea level MP with .4-ish mile jog rest, back up 7th, back home.  Repeats were 5:40 (faster than it was supposed to be), 5:48, 5:48 for Kevin, but I was apparently saving a non-negligible amount of distance by running on the inside, so mine were about 3 seconds longer as I kept going until my Garmin clicked off a mile.  My legs could still feel the hard effort from Monday and running out the door literally 15 minutes after waking up, without eating, probably wasn't helpful, so this felt a little harder than it normally would.  It wasn't like racing by any means, but I didn't really feel relaxed, especially on the first one.  Oh well, still nice to put some fast miles in the legs.

Thursday: 8 miles.  East up the aves towards the U, got off at S, crossed to 1200E, criss-crossed over to Liberty, ran a lap plus a little extra to go use the bathroom in the middle, then back over to 200E, back up to the Aves, back over to E, and then back home.  6:45 pace with 400+' of climb, which would be low-mid 6:30 on flat (without altitude conversion), so roughly marathon effort.  In all actuality, it felt pretty easy, which was good.  I was sweating a fair amount despite low-mid 50s weather when I finally got out the door at 7:45 PM, but felt really relaxed.

Friday: 5 miles, roads easy.  Day before race!

Saturday: 27 miles Bonneville Shoreline Trail Marathon, 2nd place, 7th fastest runner in the history of the race (9th fastest performance, as Karl Meltzer has finished faster than my time in 3 of his 8 starts).

I wasn't expecting to run well here.  I haven't done much trail running since last summer, and I haven't run anything over 3 hours in ages.  Only 5 people here had ever broken 4 hours, and of the 3 that did it last year, 1st was the Speedgoat 50k record holder (before Kilian came out here) and a 2:35 marathoner (Kevin Shilling, 3:52).  2nd place was my good friend Adrian Shipley, a sub-32 10k who was in really peak form had been training 110-120 mile weeks for some time (3:59).  3rd I don't know much about, but his name comes up a lot in local trail running (Mick Jurynek, also 3:59).  In any case, I had beaten some of Adrian's trail splits recently, but don't have the huge mileage in my system, so I figured that 4:05 was the absolute best I could possibly run, and that was if everything aligned perfectly.  It never does for me on trails, so I figured anything under 4:15 was a pipedream.

Anyway, I got out to the race with like 1 minute to spare (after having to use the bathroom 4 times this morning, thanks to eating an entire pizza last night), and when the race started, I shot off the front.  Last year, the top guys had crushed the starting bit, so I was a little confused when I had 30 seconds on everyone within a half mile, but decided to just go with it.  I didn't really enjoy the rockiness of the Red Butte loop, but had 60-90 seconds on everyone when I came back by the start at 4.25 miles (1st aid) in 35:xx (lots and lots of techy climb already).  I cruised through and decided I was probably going a little hard, so I backed off slightly, but maintained a solid lead over everyone for a few miles.  I hit Dry Creek Trailhead at about 42 minutes or so, and kept my lead until eventual winner Ben Lewis caught me on "Uncle F...er", an unbelievably steep climb that goes for about a half mile at 40% grade.  Everyone hikes it, as running is slower than walking on something that steep, but he was clearly stronger on the uphills and just hiked away from me.  I could see a couple guys a little bit back down the trail, but nobody else wanted to make a move.

I kept the pace up while running down the ridgeline to the 5-way (opposite of the Steeplechase course) and came out into the meadow still in 2nd, with 3rd place (Drew something) pretty close behind.  I had to refill my water and wash an exploded gel packet off my hands, so he left the station a second before me.  I sat on him for a bit and we ran about 6:20 pace from the meadow down to city creek, which felt extremely comfortable and easy.  When we started going uphill to the towers on the west side of city creek, he gradually started pulling away, but never got more than about a minute or two in front of me.   Cresting the radio towers peak, I could see that I was maintaining my distance from him, after he had somewhat decisively started gapping me, so I figured that he would eventually slow and I would catch him.

After dropping into the North Salt Lake Meadow, we took the obnoxiously difficult trail back up to the ridgline on the east side of the meadow, at which point I realized I was maybe gaining just a slight bit (probably just a couple seconds per mile, but enough that I could probably eventually catch him).  Coming up to the ridgeline, I eased off slightly on the effort and ran pretty smoothly until I got to the super steep plunge back into City Creek (better part of a mile, 40% grade).  I was pretty nervous about this plunge thrashing my quads, but I seemed to hold up OK.

I got down to City Creek, coasted the trail to the bottom, and was still gradually gaining on Drew, hitting the trailhead back to the meadow at 2:58.  I had figured that if I hit here in sub-3, I'd have a slight chance at a sub-4 if everything felt exceptional, but really didn't expect to get here in under 3:10, so I was pleased with my split.  However, I could see Kevin Shilling (last year's winner) getting closer to me.  At this point, knowing that he is an exceptional climber, I figured he would catch me, but I also figured that I could re-pass Drew to at least stay on the podium.  With that in mind, it wasn't a surprise when Kevin caught me on the steep climb back up to the meadow.  However, he never really pulled ahead of me, so after refilling our bottles (gatorade this time, as I had just recently finished my 6th and final gel and figured I'd need the calories), we pushed each other to catch Drew.  We finally got him a minute or two out from the aid station, and Kevin finally started to pull away on the steep climb back up to the main trail.

As soon as we got into some rollers, I immediately came back up on Kevin, where I stayed until we started going up to the 5-way.  At this point, I decided to just push it hard, so I put about 30 seconds on him going up to the 5-way, and then realized that I could probably hold him off on the rolling downhills to the finish, so I just started pushing hard from there.  My legs still felt great, so I figured I'd go for broke and try to catch Ben.  However, I never ended up coming up on him (he apparently pushed even harder and probably put another 2 minutes on me after the aid station) despite hammering sub-6:10 pace for most of mile 24 (still techy, but pretty downhill, with similar effort on the more rolling miles).  I figured that I needed to be off the Dry Creek trail with 6-7 minutes to spare if I was going to hit a sub-4 at this point, so when I got off with just over 6 minutes, I figured that I had a slight chance to make it in at 3:59:xx.  However, the story of the day was that I'm a poor climber right now, so I struggled up the last climb and couldn't quite close fast enough.

I finished in 4:00:26, 6 minutes behind Ben, having put 10 minutes on Kevin, and ~15 on Drew in the last 5-6 miles.

Ben became the 6th guy to enter the exclusive sub-4 hour club (which also includes Karl Meltzer, from a few years back, the first sub-4, Christian Johnson, 2 years ago, and Kevin, Adrian, and Mick from last year) while I became the closest to have missed out.  I was obviously a bit disappointed that I couldn't find another 27 seconds in a 4 hour race, but I ran a really exceptional race with almost no error, given my current fitness, so I'll take it.

I guess trail is easier on the legs than asphalt, as my legs feel really good afterwards, no worse than after a standard several hour long run.

Despite this really strong performance out on the trails, I am certainly still focused on road running.  I'm probably going to get in off the wait list for Speedgoat 50k in July, but I'll treat it similarly to this race - very far from a focus, but I'll still be happy to run well.  Despite the fact that I fully expected a massive blow-up today and I managed to prevent it, I should say that I more-than-fully expect a super massive blow-up at Speedgoat.  Bosho is a really hard course, especially for road guys, but Speedgoat, with its new course, boasting 12k' of gain on extremely technical trails, over 31 miles, is probably the most monstrously difficult trail race, course-wise, aside from the Hardrock 100.  I'm not planning much specificity for it, so it will undoubtedly hurt. :)   

In any case, I'm going to relax with some tasty drinks and a lot of ice cream for the rest of the day, and soak in the feeling of finally having run, essentially, my first perfect performance in a long race on trails, after 6 years of trail racing.

Nutrition during the race:

6 Powerbar Gels, 110 calories a piece, lots of sodium.

40 ounces of water

10 ounces of gatorade (somehow managed to not drink all that much, so I guess the cool weather must have helped).

For distance: GPS put it at 26-mid, but I'm always suspicious that it's slightly short in the more heavily wooded sections with tons of sharp turns between city creek and the U (plus some other people had it slightly longer), so I'm going to call it 27.  It's generally considered to be slightly long, so this is in line with the general consensus.

Totals: 78 miles, with 36 on trail, 12 on treadmill (might as well be road, just more controlled), and 30 on road.  A great week with a solid first workout back and a really stellar long run

Week of 3-31-13: 86 miles (Utah Valley Marathon Training Week 1 of 9)

I'm already in pretty good shape and I'm well rested at this point, so I'm going to run Utah Valley Marathon on June 8th and try to go for a sub-2:45.  My mileage was low last time and I ran sick, so I think I can eke out another 5 minutes with better training and good health.

Sunday: 15 miles, very easy casual run with Joe Dean.  My apt to memory grove to city creek to the very top of the road (last quarter mile sucked with a lot of snow) and back.  Easy pace, nice to just put another relatively long run in the legs.  Note that I did 16 the day before.

Monday: 8 miles, with Holly, 4th/D to B, up to 11th, down to city creek, up a few miles (on the trail), down Memory Grove, back up 4th.  Easy on the way up, MP for 3 of the 4 miles on the way back (Holly was sick of running fast after that and started dragging).  Started sprinkling with 1.5 to go and raining hard with .5 to go.  Definitely felt a little painful on my bare chest. Hah.

Tuesday: 10 miles.  9 miles with Holly.  First mile easy (including the climb up Rattlesnake Gulch to Pipeline, at a 20% grade), then 3.5 out at marathon effort and 3.5 back at marathon effort, followed by 1 more easy mile (mostly just back down Rattlesnake Gulch).  Note that I say "marathon effort" as I was actually not going marathon pace.  All of the "MP" miles were at a hair over 6000' on a rocky trail that, while generally flat, had a lot of bumps, mini-hills, and tight turns, leading marathon effort to net me only 7:02 pace, compared to 6:20 or so that I'm shooting to hit at Utah Valley.  It may not quite have been quite MP effort, but it was close enough, so w/e.  Got home, jogged a mile to and from the grocery store. 

Wednesday: 13 miles.  First, a commute run: 3 miles up to campus (longer way than normal, because I hate partial miles).  Because I'm crazy and have a super thick/stiff new pair of raw jeans to soften up, I wore them while running.  Also, wearing a backpack with wallet/phone/keys/running shorts/watch for my run later.  No watch, wanted it to be easy, which is hard to do on a several mile uphill when you pay attention to pace.  Next: 9 miles home via shoreline.  My building up to JCC, up dry creek, to the 5 way, down to city creek meadow the non-shortcut way, down to city creek, through memory grove, back up 4th.  Ran easy to JCC (.7), then tempoed moderately hard to the 5-way (a little under 4 miles with a lot of uphill) in 28:13.  The fastest time I had ever heard of was Adrian Shipley's 28:40 last year and I ran this wearing a backpack full of a several pound pear of super heavyweight jeans, wallet, keys, phone, etc (at least 5 pounds).  Adrian wasn't training for 10k stuff when he ran that 28:40, but it was right around the time he ran sub-4 hours for the very slow Bonneville Shoreline Marathon, putting him in very elite local Utah trail territory (the Speedgoat 50k record holder before Kilian showed up just barely broke 4 hours at Shoreline in a few tries, same with Karl Meltzer).  In any case, I'm really happy about how fluid that 28:13 felt and I think I can run sub-27 if I'm not wearing a backpack and I'm pushing all out.  After that, I picked up the effort and got down to city creek in 45:33 total (I think Adrian hit 48:xx last year).  Along the way, I hit a fastest split of 5:33 (downhill, but on quite rocky trail), so I was going hard.  Shortly before the end of the trail, it's too steep downhill to tempo, so I started into marathon effort.  This netted me 6:02 pace through Memory Grove and honestly didnt' even quite feel as hard as it should have.  It's not common that 6 flat feels easy for me, so I'm not sure what happened there.  Anyway, I hit 4th and jogged in easy from there to my apartment.  Afterwards, I went back to Memory Grove with Holly so she could play with other dogs and swim in the creek and jogged about a mile with her.

Thursday: 12.5 miles.  Holly was at doggy daycare and I have a lot to do tonight, so I figured I would just drive home, get in some miles and pick her up near the end of the run (her daycare is 3 miles from my apartment).  I started at my place, ran down to the bottom of the Aves, hopped on 4th, took that to 80, moved over to 3rd, went under the highway, and took that to Baird (3600-ish), hitting an average of just under 7:00 against a slight headwind until then (felt easy, although my legs weren't super happy after yesterday's hard effort).  I took Baird to State, and when I turned on State, I suddenly had a slight tailwind, so I ran 6:35 average until I picked up Holly.   I took State to 2100 (where a very obese woman screamed out her car window at me for being in the crosswalk while she was trying to turn across me, despite me having the walk sign), up to Main, down to Holly's daycare at 1500-ish, where I picked her up (first 9.25 in about 63-flat).  It was relatively hot and humid, so Holly didn't really want to run fast and we averaged about 7:40 for the little bit more than 3 miles to get home.  The pace was aerobically pretty easy the whole way, although I suppose I probably didn't need to do 12.5 miles on sore legs.  I'll probably run a little less tomorrow.

Friday: 10 miles.  Easy 71 minutes, southwest of downtown through the industrial areas, over to liberty wells, lapped liberty park, back west a bit, and then back up to the aves.

Saturday: 17.5 miles.  Mostly on Bonneville Shoreline, starting at Red Butte area.  Was a couple minutes late to meet up with Mark, so I figured he had left and I should just catch up, so I ran to dry creek without seeing him.  I realized that he was probably just late himself, so I doubled back until I found him.  We ran up to the 5-way together, I ran continued on down to city creek, went up the canyon a little way for a restroom, and then doubled back the same way, except that I took the steep shortcut out of the meadow above the canyon to run the same course as the Shoreline Marathon, which is apparently next weekend (and which I'm thinking about doing, more just casually than anything).  Anyway, I stuck to the road once I popped out at JCC and hit 6:20 pace for a mile near the end.  Otherwise, pace was pretty easy.

Skied for 2 hours later in the evening.  Last day of night skiing at Brighton, got up from 7 to 9 PM.  Skied pretty hard and had a blast, but was completely exhausted by the time I got home.  Not a bad Saturday. :)

Total of 86 miles (41 road, 45 trail), good week overall, perhaps a bit more than necessary on trail.

Training again: Week of 3-24-13: 47.8 miles

Sunday 3-24-13: 9.3 miles, 65:xx.  Half with Fritz, Kevin, and some Westminster guy named Oliver.   They all wanted to do 18, but as a loop, so I just went out with them to Cottonwood area and then turned around.  Pace was pretty consistent after a high-7 first mile (right under 7 most of the way).  Legs still feel a little heavy, but I think it's mostly a byproduct of having had no good quality purely aerobic based runs in 3 weeks.

Monday: 4.5 miles. Ran up the hill to the lab for work from my new place in 16:30-ish, ran back home later right on 6:00 pace.  Probably not quite tempo effort, but close enough.

Tuesday: 7 miles, With Holly.  3 miles hard, on trail (first trail run of any value since quite awhile back), from the City Creek canyon road up to 5-way in 26:54.  I don't know that I've ever run this under 32 before (granted, haven't done it in awhile or ever with reasonable fitness).  I followed the same path that Steeplechase does (ie, none of the shortcuts).  Came back down but in the meadow I took a game trail down on the Northeast side and followed up the canyon for a little while before crossing the creek and coming back down the road.  The uphill was run hard enough that I actually broke Holly on an uphill for probably the first time ever.  She was off leash and it took her ~20 seconds longer than me to get to the highest point.  On the way down, she was only willing to go a very easy pace, so I guess I tired her out pretty well. :)

Wednesday: 6 miles, easy, city creek trails with Katy and the pooch Holly.

Thursday: Off

Friday: 5 miles, 5 miles with Holly, mixed in 2 hard miles of climbing, which she didn't really like.  Over the last mile, she kept stopping behind me.  Poor pooch needs a haircut so she can deal with the increasing temperatures!

Saturday: 16 miles, My apartment at 4th and D to B, up to 11th, down the city creek road, onto the BOSHO trail, up to the 5-way (long route, no shortcuts), to the Jewish Community Center, all at about marathon effort in 60:xx (~8 miles, but with lots and lots of climb, hitting the downhill miles at just over 6:00).  Daniels tables calculate this as an equivalent pace of 6:30 if the course were flat, but that's not even factoring in all of the sharp hairpin turns, the rocks all over the trail, or the altitude, so it was a high quality effort.  Hit the bottom and was nervous about my ability to hold the same effort on the way back in my first long run in a month, but fortunately I ran into Mark Lehmkuhle, who was going really easy, so I jogged slowly with him back to the 5-way (3.5-ish miles) before he turned around.  I kept it easy from the 5-way down to the road (mostly around 7:00 pace on what was mostly just a series of pretty steep downhills).  From here, I ran down into Memory Grove and ran it in marathon effort from here (6:15s down the paved path towards the capitol).  I could tell that this was my first long run in a month - after 100 minutes or so, I just felt a little off energetically (despite eating 400 calories worth of cookies while running) and like I was close to getting a headache for the last few miles, but I was encouraged by my ability to still hold MP when I wasn't feeling great at the end.  And, it was only 16 miles, but with a ton of vertical mixed in (nearly 3000' by the end of the run), so it was definitely a "better" long run than just going out for a 16 mile slog with almost 10 at MP.

Overall, a good week to bridge me back to real mileage.

Running of the Leopards 5k (3 weeks late)

16:44, 8th place against some pretty fast competition (winner was a kid that recently took 2nd at Arcadia 2 mile's 2nd heat in 9:02 or something like that)

Race felt pretty meh to be honest.  Those mile repeats were still in my calves and I just "didn't have it".  In any case, this is only 10 seconds off my PR in slick conditions (probably not much of a factor) on a course that 12 seconds faster than a flat sea level track according to the Jack Daniels calculator.

Splits:

1 - 5:24 (took it out in about 5:15 pace, settled into that effort, looking to split 5:15 at the mile, only to realize that it flattened out and then went slightly up at the end of the first mile).

2 - 5:35 (got really lazy at the start of this mile, saw I averaged 5:55 pace for the first minute of it and then had to pick back up).  This is the mile that killed what could've been a PR

3 - 5:12 (too little too late)

.11 - :33 (realized I wouldn't hit a PR, bummed)

Effort wise, it never really felt that hard.  I wanted to push it harder, but after a mile or so, my calves just weren't super happy.  In any case, this is the fastest time I've run in just about 4 years, so I guess that's good.  Even adjusted 12 seconds back, this would've been a 16:56, which would've still been my fastest since 2009, so I'll take it for now.

Training leading up to Running of the Leopards 5k on Saturday

I basically took the entire week off after Phoenix (a total of 2 miles of jogging).  I did 30 miles last week and still felt horrible on my first run back 8 days after the race (running sick really wrecked me more than normal), but after that shock to the system, I seem to be feeling pretty good again.

Running of the Leopards is coming up on Saturday and it gives me a good chance to have a shot at a 5k PR.  It's downhill (slight bit of roll with an average grade of -2%), but at an altitude of nearly 5000', so it's fast, but only ~10 seconds faster than flat at sea level, according to Jack Daniels' calculations.  With that in mind, I wanted to be really ready to go for Saturday and also wanted to be prepped for the pounding of downhill mileage.

Since the marathon, I've hit 2 key high effort workouts, one this past Saturday (14 days after the marathon), a 2 x 2 mile, and one just yesterday (17 days after the marathon), a 3 x 1 mile.

The 2 x 2 was run on a 4% average decline with a slight bit of roll in City Creek (bottom 2 miles) and my splits were 10:02 (5:02/5:00) and 10:06 (5:02/5:04) with a 2 mile jog warmup, a 2 mile jog back up the canyon in between sets, and a slow 1 mile cooldown.  Lots of rest, yes, but the emphasis was on doing it fast.  I felt that I did them at about 5k effort, only that my calves were still slightly off from 100% after the marathon, so I lost a slight bit of pace on the last mile.

The 3 x 1 was run on a 3.5% average decline with almost no roll in the bottom mile of City Creek and my splits were 4:49, 4:50, 4:50 with a 1 mile jog warmup, a 1 mile jog back up the canyon between sets, and a very slow 2 mile cooldown.  Running this kind of pace was relatively hard on my legs, but it felt amazing to throw down 3 miles that fast (would be 5:06, 5:06, 5:07 on flat at sea level).

Coming up to Saturday, the race will only have a 2% decline, so the pounding will be slightly less and hopefully it will not destroy my body.  I'm having a hard time selecting a goal, but here's the data I have in my mind: The faster of the two splits in the 2 x 2, on that course, would be worth 10:23 on an average 2 miles of the Running of the Leopards course.  If that 10:02 was a maxed out effort (it wasn't quite and I figured I could hold it for 5k if totally fresh), it would equate to a 16:42 5k at Running of the Leopards.  If I could indeed hold the same effort for the full 5k, it would equate to 16:10.

With that in mind, I think I'm going to go out chasing 16:10 or so and just hope that I don't blow up. :)  Sub-16 sounds like a slight possibility on a really spectacular day, so I'm probably going to go out in around 5:10 and just see what I can do from there.  Regardless of what I'm shooting for, it's just a 5k, so I'm going to run whatever I'm going to run and, unless I take it out in 4:50, I probably won't blow up too badly.  I am planning to push it from the gun and really try hard for a fast time, so we'll have to just wait and see what the result is.

Phoenix Marathon Race Recap: PR (2:50:00.1) despite being sick!

Phoenix Marathon in chip time of 2:50:00.1 (and a watch time of 2:49:59.x).  How annoying is that?  Haha.  Can't complain about a PR, but man that .1 hurts. :)

Leading up to the race, I got really sick on Wednesday leading up to the Saturday race (chills, bad body aches, headache, sore throat, sniffles, cough, but no fever).  Felt terrible all day, slightly better on Thursday (but very sluggish when I ran 4.5 miles), and about the same on Friday (although running felt somewhat OK), with my throat hitting a new low and being almost completely incapable of speech.  The night before the race I felt calm about the race, but it took me about an hour to go to sleep because I couldn't stop violently coughing.

Pre-race thoughts: Uneventful.  Woke up at 4:25 AM.  Ate 1000 calories worth of powerade, nature valley bars, and bananas between 4:30 and 5:30 for the 6:30 start (I think this was a great decision, as my energy was spot-on the whole race), but feeling pretty darn sick still.  My throat was super jacked up and I had a hard time talking, but I was OK energy-wise.

Splits and thoughts (all Garmin splits, race splits were a little longer, total of 26.36 instead of 26.21, running all the tangents pretty much perfectly):

1 - 6:19, downhill,

2 - 6:18, downhill.

3 - 6:24 mostly downhill, with a little uphill.

4 - 6:18, downhill. 

5 -  6:32, all uphill, should've run more like 6:40 to save energy, felt a little forced.  Accel gel right before 5 mile mark so I could suck down water afterwards, a bit of a mistake, as it has almost no sodium.

6 - 6:40, all uphill, slightly steeper.

7 - 6:16, part of the best 2 miles of downhill of the race.

8 - 6:16, same.

9 - 6:27 No major climbs or drops from here that seemed to play a huge part. 

10 - 6:22

11 - 6:25.  Mentally noted on this mile that I wasn't sure how things would pan out.  I felt reasonably relaxed, but wasn't confident that I wouldn't blow up, especially with those 6:16s in there. Powerbar gel with lots of sodium.  Legs were slightly feeling it already, so this was good.

12 - 6:30.  Decided this would be a good pace to settle at.  I realized that I was about .07 miles ahead of the markers, split-wise, at this point, but just running 6:30s in to the end would get me a sub-2:50.

13 - 6:31, hit halfway in 1:24:0x on my watch, 1:24:30 officially.  

14 - 6:30.

15 - 6:31.  A little after 15 miles, I realized that I could hang on and not blow up.  Another powerbar gel with lots of sodium.  Keeping the legs in the same place they had been since 11.  Starting to feel a little bit hot (training in sub-30 degrees is probably not ideal for a race that got into the 60s).

16 -  6:24.  Little injection of pace.  Caught back up to a guy who had recently passed me and he hung on my shoulder from here until 23.  I thought it was mentally helpful to have someone right there for so long.

17 -  6:24.  Another pretty decent one.

18 -  6:25.  Same.

19 - 6:29, as 6:24-6:25 was getting hard.  Another powerbar gel, calves and quads both starting to feel it a bit.

20 - 6:32.  Took a little while for the gel to hit, wasn't so pleasant.  Getting pretty darn hot.

21 - 6:24. Realizing that I was now .12 miles ahead of the flags, I had to push to hit a sub-2:50, even though my watch splits were perfectly fine.  Frustrating.

22 - 6:26.  Still pushing, perhaps should've hung onto 6:30s slightly longer, hurting.

23 - 6:31.  One more powerbar gel, things were starting to hurt a lot.  Dude on my shoulder dropped off.

24 - 6:42.  Wasn't sure what happened, but I think it may have had to do with my fellow competitor dropping off here.  I didn't sense that I had slowed down and thought my garmin was just a little off at the start of the mile (sometimes it yo-yos on current split pace for 30 seconds or so before it settles, once starting a new mile), but I was just hurting a lot.  Starting to cramp, was frustrated that I hadn't taken a powerbar gel instead of an accel gel at mile 5, because just a little extra sodium would've helped.  I was sweating profusely and very salty.

25 - 6:42.  Just hanging on, cramping...

26 - 6:31.  Realizing I had to push really hard to hit a sub-2:50, now that I was a frustrating .15 miles ahead of the flags, split-wise.  Cramping, but not caring.

26.21 - 1:21 (6:28 pace).  26.21 garmin split of 2:49:10.

26.36 - :49 (5:26 pace), legs were annihilated, but I realized I had to sprint all out to get under 2:50.  Final of 2:49:59:xx on watch, 2:50:00.1 on chip.  UGH!!!

Legs were pretty toasted at the finish, so after waiting for Bill and Spencer to finish, I drank a couple chocolate milks and hopped in an ice bath for 10 minutes.  It hurt like mad for the first minute everything went numb, but it was so worth it when everything got feeling back (much less pain from then until now, 5-6 hours later).  Interestingly, my voice was completely destroyed and when talking to anyone, I'd have to repeat myself a few times for them to understand what I was saying.  On top of that, my sinuses are trashed and I think I'm getting an ear infection, but it was worth it.  It's hard to say, but I honestly don't think being sick slowed me down much.  Maybe everything would've felt a little easier without being sick, but I really don't think it affected my time more than 2-3 minutes at the absolute max, based on how I felt on a number of runs in my last few weeks of training.  My 2:53:07 TM marathon would've predicted a 2:49 low here and this felt harder, but my pace was perfectly controlled there and the weather was hotter here after mile 15 or so, so it's not a perfect comparison.

Overall, I ran pretty smart and within myself.  One more shot of salt probably would've taken care of the cramping, which cost me some time from 23 to the finish, so in the future, I'll spend the $1.19 for another gel rather than using some freebie I have sitting around the kitchen.  I think this is probably the most perfectly executed marathon+ distance run I have ever run given my ability on that particular day (off the top of my head, this was my 15th marathon finish and 35th finish of a race of marathon or longer, as I used to race way way way too much).  I think a little more salt would've given me a finish time between 40 and 60 seconds faster, but we're talking hitting 99.5% of race-day potential, so that seems really good to me.  I only think that one of my mile splits was too fast (5 on the steep uphill), but that probably didn't make much of a difference.  The first half was easier, so a 60 second positive split seems like an even effort to me.  This was honestly a pretty uneventful race for me, which is always a good thing in a marathon.  I would argue that my 2:52:55 back in MN in 2009 is probably marginally stronger, given that this course was really easy and that one was really hard, but a PR is a PR no matter how you slice it.

Everyone I knew from Utah, and otherwise, rocked it.  I loved that Jake won and the 2nd place finisher wore a singlet that said "Team Jake".  Almost seems pre-destined as to how 1 and 2 played out. :)  Riley took 3rd, Utah Valley guys did great, and it was nice to see Spencer hit a 3:05 debut off of injury-marred training.  Bill, my old high school MN XC teammate who I stayed with down in Phoenix, barely trained for this, his marathon debut, (3 long runs of 16, 17, and a moronic 22 at 6:30, his ultimate best case MP goal pace, 9 days before the race).  In addition, he was the last starter, as he apparently slashed the living daylights out of his legs on barbed wire off the side of the course while trying to go to the bathroom in the dark right before the start, and it took 10 minutes for his calves to stop bleeding.  He took it out as I expected (sub-6 for the first 4 miles, despite having an absolute best case goal of 2:50) and had to fight massive blowups the entire time, but came in at 2:55 (gun time of 3:05... haha...), having to pass almost the entire field of runners to get up to 20th place based on chip.  If he learns how to train and race, he'll be really really quick.

What's next for me?  I'm going to take a week off and then get in a few speed workouts for the Running of the Leopards 5k in late March.  While I'm happy to have run a PR, I know that I can train harder and run faster in the near future, especially if I show up healthy, so I'm about 99% ready to sign up for Utah Valley Marathon in early June (starts at 6000', which is annoying, but the elevation drop roughly makes up for the altitude).  3 months seems like a good amount of time to recover, screw around with short stuff for a few weeks, and then throw down 6-8 weeks of solid mileage and workouts.  Since I didn't put in all that many miles for this one, I'm already feeling pretty ready to start training hard again, at least mentally.  Legs are still another story, as are my sinuses, which are still completely thrashed 2 days later, so I'm going to take the time to recover 100% before I jump back in.  No matter what, I'm going to make sure I hit 2:40s next time out!

Phoenix Marathon Training Weeks 10-14 of 14

Moderately crappy mileage-wise, I was lazy.  That said, I had consistent long runs and specific workouts.  Got really sick in week 14 a few days before the race (this happened too much this winter...).  I'll post the actual numbers whenever I get around to it (mostly just 50-60 mpw).