2017 Run Till You Drop 5-Hour

Training and Tune-Up Race for NC 24

I've been getting in some belated training for North Coast 24 this year and this race will be the final long run with only 13 days left. My hope going into this race was to run 20 plus miles in 5 hours. My training this week leading up to the race was not the best preparation for that. I already had 30.2 miles for the week including a 10 mile run on Thursday. On Saturday I thought I was beginning to get a sore throat and still felt that way when I woke at the ridiculously early hour of 4:00 A.M. to get ready for the 6:00 A.M. start. I was still dark and raining driving to the race, so I missed the unilluminated sign for Downingtown West High School and had to back track. At packet pick up I saw the shirts were an uninspiring grey. The only refreshments on the course would be water and Gatorade, no snacks of any kind so I brought some Clif Bloks. They did not go down well so that added to my discomfort.

The course was laid out as a .22 mile tail, then a mile loop more or less in an hour glass shape. That meant a lot of right angle turns, at least 12-14 since some of the sides of the two main squares weren't straight. That tail threw off my pace comparisons between lap times and Garmin recorded mile times because I neglected to manually lap that small section. None the less the Garmin times were 10-20 seconds faster and the point where the split was taken on the loop regressed each lap. Despite all that I was consistently running 13 minute pace plus or minus a few seconds through 6 miles, then slipped slightly to 13:10-13:25 for the next 8. I was noticeably slowing at that point, but more importantly I was starting to feel cold and clammy, not a good sign. I decided to run one more lap then stopped at 16.7 miles per my Garmin.

While I had wanted to run the full 5 hours, there was always the thought that it might not be the best idea with North Coast 24 less than two weeks away. My training earlier in the week was more and harder than what I normally do before a long run or tune up race. Then I wasn't feeling my best though in retrospect it probably wasn't as bad as I let my imagination make it. Going back to compare my pace with what I ran at D3, I was a good 30-40 seconds faster, though also more tired. I don't intend to start anywhere near that fast at NC 24, but it does show a significant improvement in fitness since May, even if I did need to take a 4 hour nap when I got home.