I drove over to Forbes this morning to run the hill. I was Jakeless. He was over at Lynbook running a regular coaching session for his kids who are on Spring Break.
The place was near deserted. One other car in the lot when I drove up. I warmed up for 20 minutes alternately jogging over the high school track and back and then up the trail a bit and back down to the parking lot. My legs felt excellent so I decided to see how fast I could do the outbound uphill half of the loop followed by a short rest at the top and then a push back down. My goal was to break 10:20 going up and crack 9 minutes going back down. In my mind, I allowed myself a 2 minute rest at the top.
I went out rather fast hitting the first mark at 2:13 (Don't ask me what the exact distance is. It's just a mark with a pylon). The next pylon is supposedly a mile up the trail and it is just beyond that point that I turn around.
I hit the crest of the first very serious hill in just over 6 minutes so I know I had a good time going. One thing for sure. No one was passing me.
When I hit the turnaround I hit the stop watch and glanced down to see 9:58! I walked for about 40 seconds, felt recovered and just turned around and head back to the lot. Not much rest but more time trial-like. I kept the old man throttle to the floor but worked hard at staying relaxed. If this wasn't a race it certainly was a serious time trial.
I hit that 2:13 pylon in 7 minutes flat and realized that I would have to break 2 minutes coming in to break 9. I picked up slightly and then ran hard the last 30 seconds in.
8:52!
I jogged down for 21 minutes to round things out to an hour of total running.
So: 9:58 + 40 seconds recovery + 8:52 = 19:30 which is my fastest time in two and half years. The hard sections equaled 18:50 so now the question looms on whether I can run that same time without stopping?
No comments:
Post a Comment