Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Deer Run, Run

This past Saturday was the Deer Run, Run 8k race at Comlara Park near Hudson. I ran this race in 2002 but pf and a stress fracture respectively kept me out in '03 and '04. The course is set up in a European style cross country format, mostly double track trail, some open some wooded, and about 8 different barricaded jumps of 3 feet or so. The entire course was blanketed in 6 to 8 inches of snow and race morning was windy, I'd put the wind chill at around zero.

I started off slowly with Pam, jogging the first mile in a conservative 11:30, at 1 1/2 miles I picked up my pace some, passing 20 or so people in the next 30 minutes. In some of the open areas you were basically postholing through where snow had drifted slightly. My finish time was pretty slow, 51:25, or about 10:20 pace. My whole point was to basically have run and put in a few continuous running miles, but my thinking is that faster leg turnover might be helpful in terms of overall fitness and possibly even strength. I love those 3-4 hour run/hikes with lots of hill climbs thrown in, and I don't plan to modify long runs, but during-the-week workouts will have more faster tempo work and maybe the occassional fartlek thrown in. Building vo2 max a bit and pounding the legs with speed, as tedious as it can be at times, I think definitely has benefits.

Soundtrack: My buddy Rob recently burned all the old, rare Nuisance 7"s for me onto cd. Its been in heavy rotation since. "Sungod" is such a frickin' great tune.

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