What a month its been since I last chimed in. My last post was all about the massive 8 hour workout. Since that time I have been busy busy busy with trying to continue on with a good base phase, and fitting in races on the weekends. Its so hard to NOT enter races! I love racing, and I love participating in our local events. My main race in July was the 2010 Canal Run in Hancock, MI. I had an ambitious goal of running the 10 miles at 7:00 min/mi pace. I came close...ran a 7:18 min/mi pace, or something like that. My final time was 73 minutes and some change. I was a bit disappointed with my result. I was sure that I would be able to run that course in my goal time of 70 minutes. I quickly found out what it truly means to train specifically for a certain type of race.
Long course racing (i.e. Ironman) is all about the LSD, long slow distance. I guess I thought that I could do LSD and get speed as well. (do you like those drug references......endurance training is a drug so it fits). Well, I am fast, but not as fast as I want to be. Overall though it was a fun race. Northwoods Endurance sponsored a team. We all ran great races, and had a blast! NE is truly establishing ourselves in the community which is awesome!
Other highlights of July were a 25k trail run. This was a last second addition to the race schedule. I used it as a long training run for the week. But it actually turned out to be the funnest race that I have done. The course was challenging, large hills, windy trails, warm and humid weather. We got hit with a giant thunderstorm during the race, and I had a blast! The trail turned into one giant mud puddle, and the rain was coming down so hard that it was hard to see clearly at times. It was awesome! I'm hoping for the same next year :)
I scheduled a last second "Olympic" triathlon (I say "olympic" because it was a little short of the true distances) at the end of July. This was mostly for fun reasons, to get out camping with my favorite brother, and also to get him out of town because we were throwing him a surprise party that evening. I did use it as a prep race for my perennial race, The Copperman. I did well in this tune up. I really wanted to see if I could go as fast as I wanted while still doing heavy Ironman training. By now I had added some speed work to my workouts. I didn't want to add too much, but I didn't want to skimp out on doing well in my shorter triathlons. I did well in this one. I set a goal of finishing in the top 10, I came in 6th or 7th (results were confusing...), and felt pretty good about my chances in the Copperman (that post to come).
It was nice to do fast stuff again, but I found myself missing the LSD. There is something to be said about just going out and training at a pace that doesn't hurt, that feels like you can go on forever, and you basically do. This is the year of LSD, next year is the year of Speed. I like my chances at both!
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