Total for week 181 miles in 24:22 (8:05 pace) - 14 runs
Mad City 50k (100k course when it host national championship) is a beautiful course - but a lot harder than I thought it would be. The course is never closed to traffic and has many corners - So its hard to run the correct tangents. There is one medium size hill and one long soul stealing hill (Probably not that bad - But I am very out of hill running shape) - The rest is a nice constant rolling course. This makes the times of the mad city 100k last year even more amazing to me.
2 people broke the previous course record of 3:08 - Zach Bitter ran a 3:03 and Patrick Russell (Previous course record holder) ran a 3:07 for 2nd.
Zach's blog is here (Big mileage guy) http://zachbitterrunning.blogspot.com/
I would think it is 1 minute penalty per 10k look compared to a flat course with few turns.
One of my secret goals was not get lapped by the winner - I was 1-2 minutes into my 5th and final lap when I heard the cheering for Zach's finish.
I played a little leap frog with Rolando Cruz (6th) OA - He pulled away from me on the hills, I would reel him back in on the rolling section and downs. The main reason I was able to pass Rolando 4-5 times was he was refilling a water bottle and I was just grabbing 2 cups of water and slamming them. I passed him under that same pretense at the start of the 5th lap and expected to be passed again on the ensuing hills. The pass back never happened, but this helped to drive me to run as hard as possible as I felt like a hunted animal.
I really love racing - even if it is mid-pack!
I ran my fastest lap the last and finish @ 3:44:20
I had a great race, for me, and beat my "A" goal, but I got beat by 42 minutes - damn I am slow. I think it works out to be @ 7:15 pace - I am thinking that with the diffculty on the course and that I ran at 181 miles this week - I dub myslef to currently be in 3:03 - 3:05 marathon pace. Still a wee bit of work to do to make sub 3 @ Carmel.
Full results
http://www.runrace.net/findarace.php?id=12105WI&tab=a4&results=3507#dRlt
As you can see I was not in the same race as the top 4 - Although I did get 1st "Old fart".
Laps
1 45:36 (7:21)
2 45:40 (7:21)
3 45:16 (7:18)
4 44:44 (7:13)
5 43:04 (6:56)
Awesome race! Perfect splits. I am sorry I didn't get to meet you in person. I like the thought of subtracting 1 min per lap due to the difficulty of the course. I actually thought it would be easier and flatter, too. It is crazy in my mind that a time like 3:44 would be "middle of the pack" for the men. Nothing you can do about that.
ReplyDeleteYou know Bitter does high mileage when even you think it's a lot! I've never done 181 in a week, even with a 100 mile race as part of it. What gets me is how everyone's downplaying it - Bitter just counts it as a training run on his blog - but those were some fast times.
ReplyDeleteI believe Zach had run 189 2 weeks prior to Mad City only 53 the week prior due to some issues and a total of 111 or 112 the week of Mad City.
ReplyDeleteBut Zach runs a lot of 140-180 mile weeks. But he is usually doing a speed workout or 2 and a good hill workout in that mileage.
There is a big difference to a week of 180 miles with all easy runs and 180 miles with 3 good speed workouts.
I wish I was in better shape - But I am just running a lot of easy miles trying to build the aerobic engine and lose weight. I did hit 826 for March.
Michael Henze
Nice blog! And nice week and race! Negative splits are the only good negatives in life, and you certainly managed that :) Keep up the great work!
ReplyDeleteThanks Zach - I have been following your blog and results for awhile - I love it when WI people are killing it!
ReplyDelete