And Then There Were Three…

January30th, 2011.   Relieved once again after having successfully completed another L-O-N-G training run.  This morning the route weighed in at sixteen miles…once again the farthest distance I’ve ever run.  As tense as I get on the brink of these jaunts, in real time I was fairly relaxed about everything.

The new aspect for this trot was understanding my Garmin Sports Watch a bit better.  Took the time last week to figure out how to get feedback while on the move and it was pretty easy if you knew what to do.  So this time I could see precisely how many miles I had covered at any point and wanted to be certain of going the targeted distance this time.

When I reached the landmark which is four miles from the finish, my watch indicated I had gone 12.3 miles and I decided to still aim for my usual finish line and make up the quarter mile I shorted the fourteen miler two weeks ago.  I did wind up running 16.3 miles at an 8:59 pace, but my hopes for completing a marathon at that rate are slipping.  I was pretty whipped afterwards and it is difficult to conceive enduring that pace for another ten miles.

There’s still six weeks to train and no denying the fruit that has been born from running like a madman the past six months, so there remains hope I might be able to crack the four hour barrier.  And to be honest, my calculations indicate that a 9:10 pace will be sufficient to deliver a sub-four-hour marathon and I’ve acquired great appreciation for how much relief is granted by easing your pace a mere ten seconds per mile.

The best news is that I have but to endure three more L-O-N-G runs.  In two weeks there is the eighteen mile run training run, followed by the twenty miler two weeks after that and finally the marathon itself.  I pledge to keep striving for a nine minute pace through the training missions and we will see how things pan out.

It will be a brave new world after the marathon since the phenomenon called an ultra-marathon is such a unique beast.  But at the moment I feel like my exposure to diabetic dilemmas is driven by the need to satisfy a pace requirement.  There will be plenty of time to stop and test my blood sugar levels during an ultra, but that time would be precious when I am targeting four hours (which unfortunately carries over to my training runs).

Perhaps the coolest thing about ultra-marathons is that they possess individual character.  Unlike a marathon, where we all recognize the record time is around two hours and twenty minutes (I know it is now beneath that, but I must be close), ultra-marathons don’t have standard distances and given the extreme length, the terrain mandates individuality for each course.  There may be rough guidelines for Le Grand Raid, but this might be a great case for “ignorance is bliss”.  Since I have no idea what a respectable pace is, I am comfortable with just completing the sucker for the moment.  I know the target will evolve but (inevitably towards the shorter end), but for the moment I just need to safely conquer these last three long runs…