Bear Water Run

The consensus is that Hal Higdon is smarter than I am, at least when it comes training for a marathon. After asking anyone who would listen if I could mess around with my marathon training as dictated by Hal, the most common answer was to shut up and run the stupid schedule. Well, they may have said it a little more politely than that, but not much. In the end I decided that the only reason that I wanted to move the long runs  around was to make it easier. Down deep, my only goal for Marine Corps Marathon is to run a race that makes me proud. Easier and proud don’t normally go together, so I will follow the schedule unless good sense tells me otherwise.

With 18 miles on the schedule, I decided to do the Bear Water Run as a training run. There is a 10 and 20 mile option, so I could do 18 of the 20 and walk in the final 2 miles. I did the 20 mile option in 2008 as my final 20 miler for the Twin Cities Marathon. I wrote about the race in a previous post because it was one of the toughest runs I had ever had. It’s a tough course with plenty of hills, it rained, and I ran as hard as I could. I never felt like I fully recovered after that and I ran Twin Cities three weeks later at a slower pace than the 20. While I was proud that I gave it all I had at the 20 miler and later at the marathon, I’m looking for a different kind of pride at MCM. It’s good to have guts and hang tough, but I would rather run smart. At a 10 minute mile, no one will ever mistake me for being fast and at 44 I’m not getting any faster. But training smarter? There is always potential for that.

In my attempt to train a little smarter than I did in 2008, I spent the majority of the 18 miles today reminding myself to slow down. Races mean go fast, long runs mean go slow. I ran today with my eyes on my heart rate instead of my pace. Although the course has some hills, the trees around the 10 mile loop provided almost complete shade for the first lap. I came through the 10 mile split feeling great. On lap two, the sun was up enough that we lost our shade and it warmed up, but it never got too bad. Every other mile had a water stop manned by some of the most enthusiastic volunteers I’ve ever seen at a race. The next eight miles went by without incident. I concentrated on keeping my heart rate in a reasonable range and enjoyed gawking at the beautiful homes around the lake. I hit mile 18 and was glad to be done but felt fine. With an average pace exactly on 10 minutes per mile, I considered it mission accomplished.

The only thing left was to walk in the last two miles. The only hard part was trying to assure spectators that were worried about me that I was fine. I’m sure they wondered why I was walking with a smile on my face. If I was so happy, why wasn’t I running? Didn’t I know it was a race? Am I stupid? No way! I was smiling because I was actually doing what I was supposed to do. Eighteen miles is in the bag. I’ve got a cut back week with 13 miles this week, and then it’s on to the first of my two 20 milers. I’m kind of looking forward to it. Crazy!