Was it a good idea, just one day after we returned from a week of skiing in the Alps, to go for a 30 mile training run?
Sure it was.
As agreed Silke dropped me at 9am on Sunday at MarcoDebsCairn's place (no Debs was not running and Cairn was not allowed to). Silke would continue to Beinglas and ran from there to Tyndrum with the option to run back to Beinglas. She later decided to take a lift back from Tyndrum since she developed a knee problem. Nothing serious though.
Marco announced Richie Cunningham would join us. Richie had done a 30miler the day before so he would not be too fast for us. As it would turn out it was me who was keeping the pace slow. Somewhat slower than planned I think. For most of the day that was.
To enforce a moderate pace Marco and myself used a heart rate monitor (me the old fashion 305 and Marco the newer 310XT) and set max alerts: Marco 145 and myself 150.
We set off in cold but sunny Drymen at 9:50. Almost the entire day would remain sunny but also cold. The path was icy in a few places but overall very good runnable.
When we reached Rowardennan I was suffering. My quads started to complain and felt sore and sick. The pace was not particularly high but I was struggling to keep up with Marco and Richie. After all that downhill skiing the week before in particular my quads were just not the freshest.
After passing Inversnaid I noticed my heart rate started to climb and even on the flat bits the alert started to go off again and again indicating I was reaching 150bpm. Again the pace was not particularly high. Steady though. My low point was when I reached Rob Roys cave and thought I could not follow anymore. I worked really hard to catch up with Marco and Richie.
Those heart rate alerts became ridiculous but I did not manage to turn them off. And my heart rate climbed further still.
We tried to find Dario's Memorial Book near Doune Bothy but were not successful. While I was sending a txt message to Silke telling her about our progress (she was awaiting us at the Drovers Inn) Marco and Richie were off again. I rushed to catch up with them and hit a piece of rock on the path and summersaulted down the slope.
When I picked myself up there was no sign of M or R and I started to hurry to catch them. Strangely I did not feel that fatigue anymore and started to recover. Although the heart rate was climbing further... Anyway I took the lead and started sprinting up and down the remaining climbs. My HR alert did not stop beeping but I honestly my legs felt fresh as a daisy and I had a great time until we reached Beinglas.
Silke waited for us in the Drovers and we enjoyed a warm soup and chips. And tons of Coke.
There was also the familiar face of Mike Thomson (although that beard was not that familiar to me).
5 comments:
Hey Thomas,
I am sorry but I hadn't commented on your post. I had an excellent time on the run and was amazed at how fresh you felt at the end. Well done especially after a week of skiing.
Can't wait for more long runs with you soon.
Marco
Running many miles really is a funny business in terms of how you end up feeling at different points. Hope the training continues to go well. :-)
Hi CG, just catching up with the blogs, was good to see you all, i enjoyed the run too. Hopefully we can get together again sometime, cheers Richie
Thomas, I enjoy reading your posts, they communicate your love of running and understate the toughness of what you are achieving. Do you think that a HRM is a reliable indicator of how your body is coping, especially on an Ultra? ( I once ran L2B with a HRM and the very experienced South African runner I was chatting with said that they tended to be misleading on longer runs)
Regards,
Kevin
Brian, thanks and the same to you. See you at the Fling!
Richie, hope to see you soon again... maybe on another training run?!
Kevin,
thanks for your very kind comment.
Regarding the usage of a HR Monitor. I am not sure if it helps in Ultra races. In fact I believe it does not help in any race.
I will always pace myself according to how I feel. The first half of a race needs to feel comfortable. No matter what the HR is. I think that does say it all. But that is my personal opinion.
However. In TRAINING a HR Monitor can be very useful. In particular when you are a competitive personality and you just enjoy going fast. Too fast in fact for a training run.
That gets even more dangerous when you run with another competitive runner and you both end up exhausting yourself. In our case setting a limit to the training heart rate is the only way of slowing us down and thus stick to the plan. And so far it seems to work.
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