Saturday long run 7/15/06

Time 6am:
Temp 70's
Route: Rtex/Scenic/Bonnell/deadmans curve and back
Distance: 16 miles
Time: 2:19:00
Groupo: Gazelle Jorge, Gazelle Joe, Gazelle Patrick
The long run today started with 3/4 of the Gazelle Herd leaving 10 minutes early, so those of us who got there at 5:55 were a bit perplexed. We regrouped however and set off at a leisurely pace up to Bonnell. And I do mean leisurely. I decided that today was going to be a real easy day after the workouts this week, so I was purposeful in my slothfulness. It ended up as a bawdy group of 4-5 with Patrick, Jorge, Joe and myself settling into a rhythm of alternate trashtalk/and the occasional sensible comment thrown in. Before each hill, we'd bring up politics and Patrick would dutifullly spit out an obscenity and charge, effectively leading us up the slope. This only worked for so long though, and by the grand mountain Bonnell we were left to our own resources for the climb. After the obligatory steps at the top, we re-fueled and headed down the back side, finally ending up in the hairpin curve after the Bar, which I now name deadmans curve, and estimate to be about 8 miles out from the start. We turned and climbed back up and over the hill, and practiced our effortless downhill form. At 35th street, we turned and traversed back to RTex via scenic. This adds about a 1/2 mile to the mileage, but is well worth it vs. the traffic and hills on Exposition, IMHO. All was peaches and cream and I picked up the pace a notch at Mozarts and drug my sweaty butt home. Stretching, random first aid to dizzy runners, and home for a nap. No real effects from the humidity for me today- I didn't feel overheated at any time.

Tech notes: Only wanted to run 2:00 today. The literature suggests 20-25 % of weekly mileage for long runs during the base phase. Which for me would have been 8-10 miles. Thats just silly. 14 miles would have been more than enough though, but that back hill on Bonnell is a favorite. Can't let that one go by.

I felt pretty relaxed today- Going up the front of Bonnell still takes it out of me though, more than I remember from the last few years, and I am wondering if I need to concentrate on a good hill workout each week (perhaps once a month we can do 3-4 X Mt Bonnell repeats for our monday group) to supplement the monday run and the weekend long run. This might mean some solo work if the gazelle schedule doesn't jive. I was also reading a quote from Emil Zapotek, who said that he decided to train by running faster because he knew how to run slow, and didn't want to do that anymore. Anyway, his daily workouts included 20-50 X 400 in the 60-80sec range (although for the longer sets he was apparently very sporadic and even walked some, but still)...Every day. Doing speed work like that. Yikes! Too early to sharpen for this body I think. I think that will start in October. This is an interesting experimental year for me. I will see how my performance looks compared to my previous PR's. For the record current times to beat are: 1600m: 4:40, 5K: 17:01, 5mile: 28:53, 10K: 35:40, 12 miles(decker 03) 1:11:54, 1/2 Marathon: 1:16:06, 20miles, 1:58:57, Marathon: 2:46:51, 50K: 4:28:56. Most of these were done from Fall 03-Spring 05. Injury and school have curtailed training this past year. I am excited to see if I can lower any of them this year using a more balanced approach to my training.