Ilanarama!

A pretty good week. Also, I turned 50 on Wednesday.

Monday - 7 miles of trail running. First time in a week on the trails because of the rains, and they were washed out in places, with a little avoidable mud. Pace averaged 11:42, a little on the slow side, but I figure that's partly due to Saturday's race.

Tuesday - 8.5 miles of easy running, 9:05 pace, with 8x10 sec hill sprints at the end.

Wednesday - a birthday tempo! Two miles easy with strides to warm up, 5 tempo: 7:24, 7:26, 7:33, 7:20, 7:41, then easy home for 10 total. HR for tempo averaged 84% of my working heart rate, right in the half marathon pace zone (by the spreadsheet downloadable from http://www.box.net/shared/dhc7tkor4g. It's a little slower than I'd like, but felt good. Overall pace 8:07, pretty fast for me!

Thursday - easy-ish 6.4 miles, with strides which made the overall pace faster than usual at 8:42.

Friday - Back to the trails for 8.9 miles on a particularly steep (and beautiful) route. Averaged 12:19 pace, but also included over a thousand feet of climbing.

Saturday - another easy trail run, this one with my husband. About 5.5 miles at 11:24 average pace.

Sunday - Storms moved in overnight, and I headed out on a planned 18-miler as soon as the rain quit mid-morning. First 4 miles around 9:10 pace, next 9 averaged 8:50...and then it started to rain. Then it started to pour. Lightning flashed, thunder boomed, muddy water flowed across the road, and the temperature dropped significantly. So did my speed. I must have looked as miserable as I felt, because at mile 15.3, a guy in a Subaru rolled down the window and asked if I wanted a ride, and I took it.

Later that day - after I'd showered and eaten and was all warm and cozy again - yet another storm came in, and it was a doozy. I was glad to be indoors! (I posted some photos of the hail at our house on Facebook - you should be able to see this even if you don't have an account: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151660785064716.1073741825.728439715&type=1&l=44f974ba12)

Anyway, I still managed a total of 61.7 miles for the week. Next week will be a little bit of a cutback as I'm going on an overnight retreat for a nonprofit I'm involved with and will not run one and maybe two days, but I am still planning on upper-50s mileage.

AHAHAHA.  So the bad news is, I did not come even close to my goal for the 10K.  I ran 49:06, which is my slowest 10K since 2008.

...the good news is I was third overall human, and first woman.  There were about a hundred runners, I am not really sure.  So why, you may ask, the relatively slow time?  The answer, my friends, lies in two images.

First, this is the map-corrected elevation plot; for your information, the climb from the low point shortly before mile 3 (the turn-around - the course was out and back plus a second out-and-back section from mile 4 to 5) was 145 feet in 3/4 of a mile.  Oog.

 And the second photo.  As you know, it's been raining a lot in Colorado.  The course was on dirt farm roads.  What happens when you have rain + dirt roads?

 Needless to say, it was NOT a fast course!  There were a half-dozen serious mud-holes (each of which we had to traverse twice) and although the worst puddles could be bypassed, that meant  zig-zagging and heading off into uneven grass or slick mud. 

I lined up pretty much at the line and followed a small pack of men through the first mile and a half.  My pace was a little hot to start but I consciously let them pull away, and I lost the time negotiating the mud-holes and the grassy sections, so my first mile was 7:13, pretty much what I was aiming at...though at that point, I didn't realize just how hilly the course would be!

I slowed a lot climbing in the second mile (there were no markers, but I had my Garmin) and my only consolation was that I could see I was gaining on one of the men who had dropped off the pack.  I passed him about at the crest of the hill, where a water stop was located, and then tried to make up time on the downhill, but my split was 8:15, and looking at the long downhill ahead of me I knew coming back up would be a bear.

I had not counted the guys when they took off, so I was astonished to discover, as I approached the turnaround, that there were only three of them ahead of me.  The next woman was not that far behind me, though, so I knew I'd have to keep pushing.  My Garmin ticked off mile 3 at 7:20, not bad.  But by then I was going uphill, and it just got steeper and steeper..  I had never thought I'd see paces north of 9 minute miles on a 10K!   The only thing that kept me from total despair was seeing that I was gradually closing on the third man - I figured 9:30 pace must be okay, if he was moving even slower than that!

At the top of the hill we passed the water station again, and the third man stopped to take some water.  I slowed but didn't stop, and passed him as I drank.  Then it was time to fly downhill to try to make up some time, and I was able to claw my way back to an 8:21 on mile 4. 

Then came the second out-and-back section with another downhill I was not excited about having to climb back up.  The two guys ahead of me looked strong and comfortable and much younger than me.  I was just pleased to see, when I made the turnaround, that the second woman was a bit farther back than she'd been before.  I made 8:05 on that mile.

Where the second spur rejoined the main dirt road the route was a bit unclear, and I was worried I'd chosen the wrong path until I hit a mud-hole and saw all the running-shoe prints.  This stretch was the muddiest, and on the way back it was uphill.  I could no longer see the two men ahead of me, and all I could think of was that I had to stay ahead of the woman behind me.  I put my head down and chugged in, with 8:24 in mile 6 and an 8:10 pace for the last .2, to finish in 49:06 - nowhere near what I had targeted, but a good effort in these conditions.

I jogged back with my cellphone to take a few photos of the course, and caught the second place guy jogging back with his wife - who was pushing their kid in a stroller!  Talk about a serious workout!

Oddly they didn't do overall awards, but my satisfaction in coming in third overall and first female is its own reward.  I did get first in the 40-49F AG (the second woman was also in my AG), and so won a bottle of wine from the winery that hosted this event.  Finishers also received T-shirts, Balega socks, and a wineglass we could have filled at the tasting room. 

 Anyway, not remotely a PR, not any sort of fitness gauge, but a fun time and a solid workout. ETA: And to point out how solid a workout it was, I wanted to add that my HR average was 160 (86%WHR), for the last 30 minutes averaged 162, and for the last 10 minutes averaged 164, maxing out at 166 or 91% of HR reserve (working HR). So even though my average pace was just under 8 minute miles - slow for a 10K for me, the same as in my PR marathon - the effort was the level I would expect for a 10K.

Six days, sixty miles, just as planned. Hooray!

( Details )

Next week I am aiming at 60 again, with a 10K race on the weekend, yikes.

Posting now, because we're going backpacking over the long weekend, and so not only am I not running Saturday through Monday, but I will (I hope!) have an account of our awesome weather, beautiful views, and a generally excellent time had by all to post next week.

So this is a sort of cutback week, but really, the only cutting back is that I've run five rather than six days, and no long run - if we weren't heading out of town and I did a 15-miler or so on the weekend, my total weekly mileage would be pretty close to what it was last week.

( Day by day, and a photo, too )

Total of 43 miles for the week, and (since I'm not running tomorrow) 243 miles for August. Next week I hope to hit 60 miles again.

In all the excitement (well, I was excited, anyway) of posting about hiking across England, I entirely forgot to post about running. Which you all are dying to hear about, right?

[crickets]

Yeah, well. Before heading for England, I was running 30-35mpw. Then as you know, Bob, I sprained my ankle in England, and then I kept hiking on it, so I was cautious and did not just jump right back into running when I got home. When I did start running again, I...was not all that cautious. I ran 31 miles, then jumped up to about 47mpw for three weeks, and then to 53mpw. Though this looks like a rapid increase, I think it's safer to increase mileage quickly when it's to a level you've run before relatively recently, and I was running 50-55mpw in the run-up to my March half marathon. I am also, more or less, following Jack Daniels' recommendation to increase by one mile for every run per week - I run 6-7 days - and holding it for three weeks before the next increase. I'm on my third week of 53-ish miles; next week I will aim at ~60, and then there will be a cutback week because Britt and I are going backpacking over Labor Day weekend.

That's the plan, anyway. I've had a couple of really bad runs lately, I'm a little worried about my left foot (the one that had the stress fracture) and I'm thinking about cutting back early in a way that won't correspond exactly to week-intervals. But unless I'm really injured - which I think unlikely - I want to get up to the 60-65mpw range by early September.

I've also just started doing speedwork in the last few weeks. I started out with 6x400m on the high school track, which just about killed me. The next week I did 8x400m, which went much better, and this past Tuesday I did 5x half mile intervals on the rec path, which were not bad at all. The plan is to move into tempo runs, which are really the bread and butter of the longer distance races I focus on, but which I find hard to jump into without a little interval prep work like this.

Why am I doing this? Funny you should ask! I've just signed up for the California International Marathon (CIM) on December 8th, which will be my, hmm. Ninth marathon! Whee!

I'm also planning to run The Other Half (for the fourth time!) in October, as a tune-up to see where my fitness is, and incidentally to go after a PR - and a win in my new age group, as I'm turning 50 (yikes!) in September, and the woman who beat me last year (by sixteen freakin' seconds) will still be in 45-49.

Anyway, consider this fair warning that I'm going to post a lot (for values of 'a lot' meaning 'more than I have lately, which is basically nothing') about running. I hope.

Ilana and Britt's UK Adventure, that is.

( Previously )
Sunbiggin Tarn to Kirkby Stephen
Kirkby Stephen to Keld
Keld to Gunnerside
Richmond

And the photos are all going into http://www.flickr.com/photos/svwindom/collections/72157634219094073/

I'm back at home! And buried under work and laundry. But once I am un-buried, I'm going to slowly start posting My Illustrated Summer Adventures In Edinburgh and England (aie, more than 400 photos to sort through). I think what I'll do is backdate each post to the proper day of our vacation, and then, when it's done, post an index to the whole thing. So if you'd like to take small bites, you can track my 'uk' tag (or maybe the posts will show on your reading page, I dunno; I will try not checking the box that says 'don't show' - any preferences? ETA: it won't let me do this, so you'll have to track the tag or check my journal occasionally) but if you want the whole enchilada giant Yorkshire pudding filled with beef stew, you can wait until it's all up.

The 'official' Coast-to-Coast route continues across the moors to a place called Hawsker, where it picks up a footpath leading to the coast at a point about halfway between Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay. Most of the our group chose to take the bus to Hawsker and walk from there, for a five-mile finish to the two weeks of hiking. But the Cleveland Way - a trail system we'd followed for much of our time in the North York Moors - actually goes through Whitby and follows the coast all the way down, and Britt, Kris, and I opted to leave from the hotel and take this route to our destination.

We walked down to the river, crossed the bridge, and climbed the stairs leading to Whitby Abbey. Just past the ruins we easily found the marked footpath, which took us to the cliff's edge.



The path wound precariously along the top of the cliff. In many places the path veered dangerously close to the edge - or rather, the edge had eroded dangerously close to the path. Farther along the route we talked with another walker, a teacher who'd lived in the area for twenty years, and he told us that they'd had to relocate the path as the cliff fell into the sea.



( To the ends of the earth! )

We started this day's hike by getting lost. We had walked up the obvious dirt road, but the actual trail had started at an overgrown gate in the stone wall along the road, and we ended up having to backtrack over a mile to get on the proper trail. According to the guidebook, though, this was nothing new: in 1711, the justices of Yorkshire decreed that guideposts should be erected on the moors to aid travelers.



( More moors )

Photos at Flickr

We had a layover day in Richmond, which is something many C2C'ers do, as Richmond is a relatively large town with many things to see and good shops. Our group had been parceled out again among several B&Bs; Britt and I stayed at the Frenchgate Guest House (our room was the one in the center photo in the photo bar at the top of the page) which is a lovely old townhouse. Ralph, the owner - a retired engineer who's owned the place for eleven years - said that among the building's legal papers are the original deeds for the two houses that were combined to form the current house. From 1457. In Latin.

In the morning we met for a city tour given by a volunteer who, alas, was not a very good tour guide. A lot of standing around, a few rambling stories, a few indications of what might be interesting without actually going in or seeing these things. And then it started raining. But we did get an idea of what we wanted to see during the afternoon, which we had free.

( Touristing! )

Nine photos, mostly of the castle