Leadville Marathon; Here I come
Well, that was a near miss, and sworn by my secrecy, I will not be able to tell you the story of how I trained for and almost didn’t get to run the Leadville Marathon. What I will say is, “Thank you very, very, very much.”
An 18 mile run is an 18 mile run, is an 18 mile run. And not to put that 18 mile run to test would have been, well a bummer.
So my 18 mile run, done in town at ABQ. I did one lap around the Academy. I did one lap straight up to Tramway, down Spain and back home, and then 2 x 30 minute laps around the park, for a total of 3 hours and 4 minutes.
I did my first Tempo run at altitude. That was interesting. Kind of sucked actually. It was 4 minutes faster than my Academy lap on my long run, but not saying much, about a 10 minute mile. And I have a lot of work to do!!
I want to swim so bad, there’s .25 open swim tonight at one of the highschools. With a 3.5 hour run I may prioritize it. It’s tonight, and I would not have enough recovery to hit that run with gusto.
I wanted to talk a little bit more about my run. My 16 mile run was so painful the last 2 miles, I ended up walking some of it to the parking lot. My 18 mile run I picked up the tempo the last 3 miles and I had no pain! NO PAIN!
Running mechanics is so important! Just goes to show you when you run with a faster cadence, pain goes away.
I think, next week we will have a trip to Santa Fe. A day trip, I guess with the dogs, will have to figure out something on that. First, I need to get through the 21 miler. That’s 210 minutes. That would be 3 hours and 30 minutes. OUCH!
Winning time last year for the marathon was 5 hours in some change. I would really, really like to run a 10 minute mile. For my 50k I ran faster per minute mile than the winning time at Leadville.
I know it will not be easy.
I know the air will be thick and I will need a lot of water, espresso, and figure out what to do with my food. They have aid stations every3 miles, if I can get my magic potion to the aid stations, that would be fabulous.
Today we meet our very first friends in Texas in ABQ. I made a gluten free pasta salad. I still need to saute the chicken.
I want/need a track, and some trips to 10,000 feet with some intervals.
I need to make sure the smoke stays clear for my long run. I am scheduling a babysitter right now.
I am not going to do my hill intervals as part as my long run, however, based on the topography profile, I will need to run 1000 feet straight up, and then, 2000 feet straight up and then, 1000 feet straight up.
It looks to be an out and back course.
Is there somewhere in town to do this run?
No, the best place would be either Santa Fe or Water Canyon in Socorro. Some walkie talkies and a crazy jack(Parson’s) russell terrier and we should be good to go. Oh and some Indian Wares.