Friday, April 27, 2007

Great run

I've really been feeling slow this year. I guess I need to spend a lot more time doing intervals, because this is about 3 years that my speeds have been pretty stagnant. It also doesn't help that most races here are short - 7 to 10 km. What I don't have in speed I generally make up for in endurance.

Finally the running club decided to push it a little longer. Wednesday was a 7.4 km race in Sacile where I ran a well paced but slow 6:50 pace (although considering the winding course that's probably equivalent to 6:30 on the track). Thursday for practice we had a nice 9 mile trail run. 5 miles up over the foothills into Val Cellina and down to the old road, then 4 road miles back. 4,000 feet total elevation change. Check it out.

The climb up was hard and quick paced, leveling out to even paced rollers. The GPS glitched on the descent, but it was about as steep as you see on the graph (and slow going). At a little before an hour and a half we hit the road, then dinked along to a spring to drink. I hit the road hard, knocking out the next 2 1/2 miles at 5:50 pace and dropping to a 5:10 for the last 1/2 mile. It was downhill, but I was pretty happy with the pace after all the climbing and descending.