Tour de Half

Yesterday morning, I "led" a group on a tour of the Nittany Valley Half Marathon course. Led is QFI because I was bringing up the rear for most of it. (Part of that was to shepherd other runners though.)
It had poured down a cold miserable rain all through the night, but it let up just before we started. There were about a half-dozen of us ready to brave the conditions and the course. I have to say that I never really felt great at any time during the run: I felt sluggish most of the time. I also need to replace these shoes. I started feeling the ankle strain going up the last big hill, and had to slow down a notch.
The nasty weather returned soon after I got home, so I guess our timing was perfect.
I was surprised to see that I had done it in 1:48. I figured I was closer to two hours the way I was running. More surprising than that is that I don't feel bad at all this morning, despite feeling a little sore most of yesterday. I did yoga and had a nice rest yesterday, so I'm sure that helped.

16 miles

Saturday I did my Masochist Marathon Training #2, a 16-mile route with some big hills. It was actually easier than I thought it would be: about 6 of the first 8 miles are uphill, so when I turned around, it was a lot of downhill, with two BIG climbs. The only issue I had was that there was some really rocky terrain near the mid-point, which put a lot of unneeded stress on my ankles and lower legs. I'm still a bit sore, but I'm OK.
I ran it in 2:25, or about a 9-minute-mile pace.

Then last night I did a two-mile recovery run, nice and easy, on the track at Rec Hall.

Murderous Marathon Training #1

Saturday was the first in the series of increasingly long runs, designed to get me ready for the 3-4 hours of running I'll be doing in the Marathon.

This first run was a 14-mile out-and-back course through the woods behind Tussey. It's starts out with a 3.2 mile uphill, which I did in about 30 minutes. The next 4 miles are pretty steadily downhill. That too I did in about 30 minutes, so at the turn-around I was at 1 hour even. So, then I had to turn around, and those 4 miles I had just run down I now had to run back up. That hurt, but there was never a doubt that I could make it. I was mighty happy to see the top of that though: that section took me just under 40 minutes. So finally it was 3.2 miles down, and even though I had already gone 11 miles, a felt strong running. I crushed that section in 23 minutes, which is very fast for me.

That was the longest run I'd every attempted, and I completed it in 2 hours, 4 minutes. That's just slightly slower than my half-marathon pace from last year, but it was also a much harder run.

Masochist Marathon Training Series

The response for the "Tour de Half" Half-Marathon run has been great: it should be a pretty good group.

In addition, I invited anyway one wants to join for some very tough, long runs over the next four weekends. I call it the "Masochist Marathon Training Series," because each of the runs involves big hills. I figure that a couple of these will be harder than the Marathon itself.

Tussey mOUnTaiNBACK 2006

It was a cold morning Saturday, and the temps did not improve by much as the day wore on. I met my 8-person relay team, In It For the T-Shirt Too, all of whom were very nice. I could tell it would be a fun day.
My first run was the dreaded Leg 4: up the hill from Whipple Dam for 10 kilometers. For quite a while I ran with a guy named Tim, who knew one of the people on my team. When we got to the big hill, he pulled away from me. That was OK: as I'd said to another teammate, the key is to go at my pace. I won't gain anything trying to catch him if he's faster than me. I slogged up that big hill in 53 minutes, which is 2 minutes faster than my previous best.
As we drove around and got to know my running mates, the day flew by. Nobody was too concerned with our times, we were just out to run, do our best, and have a good time. A few times while waiting at transition areas, we saw some of the Ultra runners coming through. It was really inspirational: I definitely think I'll have to try it sometime.
I also ran the anchor leg (#12) which is mostly downhill. I crushed that thing: I actually thought I was going to beat my team who were following behind in the van. They had waited for the hand-off from In It For The T-Shirt I, to cheer on Stevie, the woman who had organized both teams. I ran the 4.2 miles in @32 minutes, although I forgot to stop my watch right away, so it was actually faster than that.

It was a great day in the woods. And I made a bunch of new friends, some of whom I will be running with again. In fact, as I get into the final weeks of marathon training, I am going to set up some group runs (masochistic, long, brutal group runs) over the next few weeks.