Friday night I ran my first real measurable fast workout of this training cycle, though the circumstances were far from ideal. It was 5 x 800 meters intervals. It was late in the night (dark), and I intentionally didn't run during the day because it was so hot. Even after 10pm, when I left for the run, it was still 80 F. I ran at Waggener High School track; not the best, and I had to move benches from the inner lane and dodge sprinklers.

Warning: if you are easily grossed out, you might want to skip this paragraph. So in the second lap of the second interval, I had to run really hard to keep my time decent, and I felt that I was losing control of my rectal muscles. I had to slow down a bit so I didn't crap my shorts. I though my intervals were over, and I wasn't sure I can get home without an accident. But it was really dark at the track, so I just took a dump in the shadows by the track; used some grass to wipe my ass, and then I felt liberated. The I thought that I might as well finish the intervals.

It wasn't easy. I had to push myself to the limit on every single one of them to just put them under 3 minutes. Splits are 2:54, 2:57, 2:54, 2:58, 2:58 (hundredths are rounded down). But with the circumstances, I say it's not too bad. Average of 2:57.7. It barely hits the 1:27 HM McMillan training times, but under more ideal circumstances and later in the training cycle a HM PR is not out of the question.

Here is my weekly mileage plan for the HM:

08/19 (11): 58

08/26 (10): 62

09/02 (9): 66

09/09 (8): 62

09/16 (7): 68

09/23 (6): 72

09/30 (5): 70

10/07 (4): 62

10/14 (3): 64

10/21 (2): 60

10/28 (1): 54

11/04 (R): 44

Bernheim Challenge 7 Miler Race Report

Goal: Top 10

I wasn't planning on running this race until a few weeks ago I volunteered for another trail race and I got two free entries for two trail races of the 2013 series. I got all excited about running trail races, especially after the Bourbon Chase fell through. I didn't specifically prepare for this one, and the race came at the end of a 58-mile week, only the second in a row of large mileage weeks, so I was not recovered. But I didn't care that much and I thought I can still be in the top 10. I previewed the course so I knew where the hills were. The main thing that worried me though was that the trail is very technical, and the older I get, the worse I get on technical terrain. Not that I was that good to begin with...

We woke up to a gorgeous late summer morning, temperature in the high 60s, which I guess is not good for me considering that I tend to suffer less from heat than my opponents. The race was held in the beautiful Bernheim Forest and Arboretum. It was a point-to-point course, so at the beginning buses took people up the hill and we ran down back to Guerrilla Hollow (close to the Visitors' Center). I was lucky enough to get a space in a car of a friend of a friend, so I was up on the hill in no time. The race started a little late, but that was expected due to the 100 runners, who had to be taken to the start line.

We started on a fire road in the woods, but in 50 yards, the course took a right turn onto a singletrack trail. I wanted to be close to front runners, and I took the turn in the 4th place. The first mile was mostly downhill, so I pushed myself really hard, finishing the first mile in about 6:30, which is no simple feat on that technical course. Maybe I paid for that later. In any case, I let a few people pass on the subsequent uphill mile, and then settled into a pace and a strategy that I thought I could keep by the end.

Well, it didn't happen. One by one, people passed me and I never saw them again. Typically this happened on the climbs, where I had to walk many times, because I felt exhausted and mentally weak. But even on downhills, I wasn't very fast, and some runners gained on me. I gave up two more positions in the last mile, one, to a 56 year old guy, who was barely faster running uphill than I was walking, but I could not run. I finished in 12th place with a time of 59:40. Age graded is even much worse: 17th place. An old rival beat me by more than two minutes, so that he actually took a wrong tun and lost a bunch of time!

I can try to find excuses, but at the end, this is what it is: a pathetic performance. This kind of trail racing is probably not for me, but even then, I should have done better than this. So it might be all for the better that I won't be able to race Siltstone in November (family schedule), but instead I will race the LSC Half Marathon again. It would be really cool to PR in that hilly race, maybe running a 1:23, but it seems like a long shot with my recent performances...