2018 Piedmont 8-Hour

Ready to Push and Test Myself

After dealing with a bunch of medical issues in the first half of the year, including atrial fibrillation, I finally resolved all of them and had about 11 weeks to really focus on training for this race. I've been averaging close to 40 miles per week, so I felt much better prepared and was moderately confident I could reach my goal of 31.35 miles, i.e. 11 laps of the 2.85 mile loop on trails through Powhatan State Park, VA.

I paid more attention to final preparations than I usually do, keeping mileage low but including some intensity and not taking any extraneous rest days. Some of the runs were so fast that I was concerned I would have difficulties on race day keeping control of my early pace. As I recalled from last year the aid station had the typical, chips, bananas, oranges, cookies, etc.,but no more substantial food until lunch when hot dogs and hamburgers would be available. After Dr. Lovy's suggestions at North Coast 24 for more protein early in the race and carbs later, I brought my own fixing for PB&J sandwiches to supplement the aid station offerings.

As the weekend approached the Eastern seacoast was being threatened with a Nor'ester, so I was closely monitoring the weather forecast. Fortunately it moved further up the coast so Saturday morning's forecast was not bad at all. Temperatures looked okay. The temperature at the start was 46F with a light rain, so shorts and a long sleeve shirt were fine. I checked out a new route to get from my hotel to the race after I arrived on Friday. Apparently that didn't do much because I missed a turn, went way out of my way, and pulled into the parking lot as the race director was giving last minute instructions. Rushing around to get my number, back to the car to shed my warmups, then forgetting my vest and water bottles, I was 1:15 late getting to the start. Being a fixed time race with only complete laps counted, this was not an issue, but I did have to fight the urge to take off at a faster pace to catch up.

I reined in that impulse to try to catch up and tried to settle in on my planned pace. I needed to average a bit over 15:00 per mile to complete 11 laps. Anticipating a slowdown regardless of my starting pace, I was aiming for about 14:00 pace or a little over. Coming through the first lap at 39:26 was slightly too fast, but within my acceptable range. The only question was how long it was maintainable and how much would I slow when I eventually did. I was amazed when I kept close to that pace for the next 6 laps with an average of just about 40:00 per lap. I knew I wouldn't be able to hold that, but that didn't keep me from briefly fantasizing about running 12 laps and 34.2 miles. Lap 7 finally saw a small slowing of my pace as I ran that one in 42:01. I noticed both my running and my walking paces were slowing, not just my running. The big question now was how much more I would slow and would I basically implode like last year.

My next lap of 44:18 wasn't too bad, but lap 9 showed a huge drop off in pace at 50:26. I'm madly trying to compute what pace I needed for two more laps to still complete 11 and reach my goal. I'm thinking I may slow even more but I need 2 more laps in the 51-52 minute range if I'm to barely squeak in under the 8 hour limit. The one saving factor was that I was still running a little, mostly the downhills, but still running. Somewhere in there, maybe the carbs were finally kicking in, but I started feeling better and my pace actually increased. Lap 10 was 46:43 which meant I had a full 57 minutes to run my final lap. Not satisfied with that, I kept pushing and ran my last lap even faster in 42:52. I finished with over 14 minutes to spare, but obviously not enough time for another lap.

Next up is the Crooked Road 24 Hour in Rocky Mount, VA. I had initially planned to limit myself to 12 hours even though 12 hours is not an official option, but after seeing how I performed at Piedmont, I'm at least leaving open the option to go the full 24 hours. Some of the determining factors will be how well and how quickly I recover, how my training goes over the next 3-4 weeks, and what I decide about when and what my next race after that will be.