My running friend Paul made a 3 hours drive to get to my industrial city for a long "race". We started 9 am on Sat, April 26, 2008 as i announced here. Long distance running definitely not popular in Kaz at all, no wonder nobody joined us. If you suddenly visit this park in the morning you can meet jogging people, but you know, there's a huge difference between couple miles they do and those magical number Twenty...Weather conditions - far from ideal, wind and some rain. Local people were just shoked looking at Paul, such a strange man in T-short (!) & shorts (!!!) while everybody wears gloves and hats...
My perfomance wasn't that hard as I thought it would be, we even left this park to make 1 tough hill. Chatting from time to time we use "Boston therminology":
- so now we're facing what?
- Heartbreak hill ! :)
I didn't feel bad, at least till mile 17 or 18 I guess. But at that point I agreed with Paul to hit "twenty one & last two miles have to be sub 8:00" (which is my GoalMP) and actully was ready for this.
Mile #19: easy, about 8:40 or so.
Mile #20: we got into our stride - Paul runs increadibly fast, most of the mile having sub 7:00 pace. He just really blew me away. Paul has a shorter stride but moves it with higher frequency. I finish mile 20 having 7:40 on the tool and 19.98 mi figure which doesn't seem to be moving further. Damn! "Lost Satellite Reception. Click Enter." I stop, i click, restart, turn it on again. Stand still for about 50 sec watching Paul running fast far away. He'll kill his 21st mile with sub 8:00, soon. My Tool is ready, I push "start/" and run just to push "/stop" ten seconds later.
Outcome: 20.01 mi @ average pace 8:3x. Paul made his 21 at slightly faster pace.
The 20 miler nailed total 50+ mi for a Week #21;
One complain: Man, was I feeling bad after the long run. Sore on Sat and next day during Russian Orthodox Easter, I was not able to get out of home. It did hurt bad.
I want to Thank our Media group:
Sasha - my co-worker, almost proPhotographer for making Great shots!
My bro Tim - for spending some time with us and HD camera, i bought from Paul.
Next day Tim won Karaganda City Chess Championship and now he's gone for another tournament...
Thank you Paul for making this 20 miler with me, I used to do it solo but now I see, even putting the same level efforts as usual, it feels much easier when we do sort of Long Run / Boston simulation / almost a race. As my coach said: "There is something about having a running partner to make the miles just slide on by."
1 comment:
Sounds like Paul is worth his weight in gold - making that trip for a 20 mile run!
It is common for a 20 mile run to take a lot out of you when the long run is a very large percentage of the weekly mileage (20 / 50) Try to increase your other runs a little bit week by week. This will make the 20 miler less stressful overall.
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