kurthiggins.com

Miles run: 10.05
Time: 1:38:28
Pace: 9:50
Temp: 27° and windy
HR: 167/183
Perceived effort: 8
On the iPod: the entire album Bass! by Simon Harris

Actually it’s usually Over-distance Sunday—from my high school track and cross country training. We’d go in on Sunday for another practice and Since Sunday wasn’t constrained by a late start at the end of school, we’d do the long run of the week.

The farthest I’ve ever run is 12 miles. I already talked about it here, so I won’t bore you with it again. Suffice it to say that that PR (personal record) is squarely in my sights. Ten miles today, twelve or thirteen next weekend. Granted today’s run, even two miles SHORTER than my PR, was 14 minutes LONGER than the time of my distance PR. Speed will come. For now, it’s distance on which I’m focusing.

I was worried about the wind, but the warm temperature (relatively speaking) of 27° was good enough to keep me from getting chilled. I also wore my tight cycling jacket which helped a little. The jacket starts to fail in blocking the wind at about 25-30 mph of wind. I learned this on the 200 mile Bed & Breakfast cycling tour weekend from two years ago. Only at about the 7 mile point with a VERY strong tailwind, did I start to feel it cutting through the jacket.

The first couple miles were mediocre at best. Garbage miles to be suffered through until the “good” miles show up when my body grudgingly agrees to start feeling better about the pain I’m putting it though. I love that term “garbage miles.” It perfectly encapsulates the concept, I think. I think I first heard it from John.

My Nike+ gadget wasn’t recording mileage very accurately, so the device only said I completed 8.25 miles. Now I have to figure out how to hack the data in it so it uploads properly to the Nike website. Groan. Add another item to my last post. After reading about troubleshooting the Nike+ device I learned it needs to face in a certain direction, stay as parallel to the road as possible and not shift or bounce unnecessarily. Two of those three criteria may have been a factor.

So I did two laps of my five mile loop (the one from the recent video). First lap went fine. Not a peep out of the knees. I really think I’m going to be OK, knee-wise. The thousands of miles on the bike and hundreds of which were uphill with quite considerable stress on the knees have strengthened them to a point where they can manage the stresses of running quite well.

That wind I mentioned? It really picked up around mile 7 just as I turned so it was fully on my back. It was great. The wind pushed me along like a horse nudging its owner. A horse with an extremely cold nose that seemed to press on my entire back and legs.

With one mile to go, I must have bonked. Because I went from somewhat slow, to downright slow. Could be that I only had a Luna Bar and large hot tea in the previous 19 hours since the delicious turkey club from The Factory. This bonk (if that’s what it was) was very different from the ones I get cycling (which I am, sadly, very familiar with). On the bike, my performance drops from say 17mph to a pitiful 12 miles per hour or so. On foot, I’m guessing I went from a 9:50 pace to 11:30. However, I didn’t FEEL as badly on foot as I do on the bike. Of course, another factor to consider is that when I bonk on the bike, it’s usually 4 1/2 to 5 hours in, whereas on foot it was only 1 1/2 hours in. So many variables. It’ll be interesting to learn the different points at which my body starts clamoring for food and water while on foot.

This entry was posted Saturday, February 10th, 2007 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Running. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.