Running Well

It was a good week, full of good runs. Monday was a very easy 8 mile recovery run, but Tuesday I picked up the pace and mileage. I ran a quick 6 miles at lunch, then did my track workout to add another 8.5 miles after work. After a couple of warm-up miles, and 6 x 100 stride-outs, I ran 3 x 1 mile repeats at 5:42, 5:49, 5:42. Not my best but certainly getting back into the range. I knew I was pressing because the nausea at the end of each mile told me so.
On Wednesday I ran a night trail run with Paul R. and Dave P., sort of a test run to check out how I would handle the post sunset portion of the Burning River 100. I wore my Petzl LED headlamp and carried a small flashlight (actually the removable LED headlight from my bike.) What did I learn? Well, my headlamp does not give enough light by itself, so the hand held flashlight is good idea. The flashlight was actually more useful because the beam was lower and at a better angle to the ground to reveal rocks and tree roots. Also, even with the hand held, I found that you don't get nearly as much reaction time. I naturally shortened my stride to allow for this. Looking up in the trees for the blazes can be tricky because you cannot take your eyes of the ground in front of you for too long. I found that I had to slow to a walk at times to get my bearings. And, because of these issues, you pace is slower even though you may be working just as hard. You just cannot cover as much ground at night. What else...oh, bugs are more of a problem, starting at twilight and into the early night. Thanks to Paul for bringing some spray. It was a successful run, and I did become comfortable with night running. Dave and Paul made it lots of fun. (You get into some weird conversations at night on the trails.)
Thursday I worked an abbreviated tempo run, 8.5 miles total, but only 4 of those at pace, averaging about 6:40. Friday was a recovery 6 miler. On Saturday, a group of us ran the first part of the Buckeye Trail 50k course, from Oak Grove to Snowville Road. It was a good morning, and after running the out portion at a moderate pace, some of use really picked it up on the return. It turned out to be a more aggressive run than I had planned, but it felt good. After that, I was determined to make Sunday a slower run, especially with the race only a week away. OK, so that was the plan. As it worked out, I did 11.44 miles at 7:29 pace. Not exactly taking it slow and easy. Total miles for the week: 72.

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Based on advice from many running friends, I am going to try to run the BT50k this Saturday as a training run for the Burning River 100 Mile Run, rather than run it all out. Wyatt in particular has been very emphatic that I need to go into the BR100 as strong, and the BT50k on top of three marathons in two months, will take too much out of me.