Heavy rains. Canceled the long run. Decided to actually  race. Ran in a rain vest and pants.Took off the vest at mile 2. Did not start back raining until 10:00 after I finished. Very surprised with results.

Hot To Trot 8 hr

7:54:14

35.39 miles. Goal 35 -40 miles.

It kicked my Butt

Finished my first mountain marathon, 46 km with 5000 metres of accumulated height in 07:26.

Very happy and surprised with my performance, maintained a regular effort during all the race and finished strong.

My average hr was 170. Finished 149th of 270, much better than in previous shorter trail races.

MAF training has improved my running and racing, no more bonking, no cramps, more fun.

Next target is a road marathon at end of November, will continue training  mostly MAF with some tempos/marathon pace, maybe one per week or ten days, looks like it works for me as my MAF test is still improving.

Today my wife has started with MAF training, she's triathlete, she was not convinced at all when I started lhr training but my results have changed her mind 

Thanks runnerclay. My official race time was 07:26:45 for 46 km. Ultra? I don't know why but I always had thought that the minimum distance for an ultra was 50 km  but you re right I've just entered the DarkSide.

Haven't been posting on the Low HR daily run thread because I haven't worn my HRM in about 9 months.  I'm just running easy on the easy days but not worrying too much about my specific HR.  My training is going well though and I'm still making progress, but the gains are now measured in seconds rather than minutes like they were when I first started.

I posted this race report in the main forum, but thought I would cross post it here for any that are interested.

Shallowater Stampede 10K race report.

Well, I felt like I pushed it about as hard as I could and snuck in under the buzzer to go sub 44 minutes.  Official time was 43:58.3.

Cool and rainy for the last couple days, race time temperature was 47 degrees, 86% humidity, wind ENE at 7 mph.  Heavy overcast, but not raining.  Pretty close to perfect race conditions.

Got there a tiny bit late and my warmup was a bit short with just over a mile of easy running with just a couple short strides mixed in.  Made a pit stop right before the race and barely got in line and was still messing with my Runkeeper app when the gun went off.

Went out and settled into a 7:05 pace which felt manageable, but by mile 2 I was starting to breath harder than normal.  This training cycle I spent a lot of time on intervals and hardly any time on tempos so I actually hadn't been breathing hard for an extended period in a while so I was hoping that it wouldn't end up being an issue.  Legs were feeling good and other than breathing a little harder than I expected to be, I decided I could stick with it and tried to keep a 7:05 pace for the first 3 miles.  Miles 1, 2 and 3 clicked off at 7:06, 7:07 and 7:05.

At the turn around I was breathing about the same and legs still felt decent so I tried to pick it up a little bit.  If I pushed too hard I could feel it and I would find myself thinking I was locked in on a solid pace and then my runkeeper audio cues would tell me I was actually slowing down so I would have to push it back up again.  Miles 4 and 5 clicked of at 7:03 and 7:03.  I thought I picked it up on mile 6 a bit and my audio cues kept telling me 6:5X split pace for pretty much the entire mile, but I must have slowed a little right at the end and it ticked up to a 7:01 split.

With .2 miles to go I tried to pick it up again and felt that I did to some extent, but I was running out of steam and I wasn't going to catch the guy ahead of me but I still needed to finish strong to make sure I ended up sub 44 minutes.  I tried to break into a sprint for the last 100 yards, but it just wasn't happening.  I was hurting and didn't have much left in the tank.  My wife said that I looked really tight.  The clock was ticking down and I gave everything I had and crossed with 43:5X on the clock!  For a second I thought I could beat my time from last year by a full minute (last year was 44:51), but I just didn't get there.

I was gassed after I passed the line and it took me about 10 seconds to get my GPS stopped so my GPS splits for the last bit aren't correct.  I took 10 seconds off that last split duration and that would calculate out to a 6:40 pace for the last .24 miles which seems about right.

Here's the splits.  Very limited elevation gain or loss throughout the whole course.  The biggest change is a gradual 25' drop and then back up at about the 2.5 mile mark going out and 3.5 mile mark coming back.  Other than that it is pretty close to what most would consider pancake flat.

Splits (GPS Interval)
	Type	Distance	Duration	Total Duration	Pace
1	Manual	1 mi	7:05.23	7:05.23	7:06
2	Manual	1 mi	7:06.59	14:11.82	7:07
3	Manual	1 mi	7:04.41	21:16.23	7:05
4	Manual	1 mi	7:02.57	28:18.8	7:03
5	Manual	1 mi	7:02.66	35:21.46	7:03
6	Manual	1 mi	7:00.72	42:22.18	7:01
7	Manual	0.24 mi	1:35.82	43:58.3	6:40

Not sure I left much out there on this one.  Felt like I paced it just about perfect and those last few miles I kept thinking I was pushing it up and then my audio cues would tell me that I really wasn't so I would try to push it up again.  This seemed to repeat itself from about mile 4 on in.  I would push the pace up to 6:5X and then the next audio cue would tell me I had dropped back to 7:0X so I would push it back up, rinse repeat.

Thanks for the input and advice.  Don't think I have a 6:59 pace 10K in me right now even with perfect weather.  Maybe that needs to be my goal for next years race.

My wife and 7 year old son ran the 2 mile distance of the same race and both finished in the top 3 of their age groups as well.  Here's the family with our medals after the race.

That's it for now.  Nathan

congrats! why do you no longer use the HRM btw?

I agree btw that you don't need to worry too much on the easy days about exact HR - it should be in the ballpark for recovery HR range but sometimes you can modify that a bit down or up depending on other physical cues

congrats! why do you no longer use the HRM btw?

 

I agree btw that you don't need to worry too much on the easy days about exact HR - it should be in the ballpark for recovery HR range but sometimes you can modify that a bit down or up depending on other physical cues

The battery on my strap needs replaced and I just got tired of messing with it.  I tended to have lots of static issues in the dry climate that I live in and just felt I was constantly messing with it.  It would glitch when pairing with my phone sometimes and I just decided to run easy and that was good enough.

I need to replace the battery and do a MAF test sometime though.  Just to make sure my easy is in the ballpark of what I think it is.  If I were to guess I would be running most of my easy runs around MAF +5 or so.

No marathons coming up.  Have a 5K in October and a tough 1/2 in November.  In between I'll be spending a lot of time in the mountains hunting.  That's the reason I started running to begin with, to get in shape for hunting.

Thanks for the input.

Runnerclay, you are going to catch me on YTD miles pretty soon.  I'll be slacking off over the next 30 days or so with 3 weeks of hunting where I might not get any running in at all so you will probably pass me either by the end of September or early October.  You are knocking them out lately.

Getting ready to run the Army 10-miler on Oct 12.  Last year I ran about 77:30 in this race and my MAF treadmill was 8:42/mile.  A couple weeks ago I hit 8:00/mile for my treadmill test.  I think I should break 70 minutes based on that, but I'll know for sure in 9 days.

Biggest change this year from last is doing a lot of cross training in place of running to avoid injury.  I've been walking on a treadmill, arc training, bicycling, stationary bicycling, swimming, and lifting some weights.

Maybe I'll be running with some of you there!

-Matt