Early season slowness

I feel slow. More so than any other year. I shouldn’t complain since its obvious that 100 days of hiking on the Appalachian trail (read our journal here) would result in decrease in my speed. I just wasn’t really prepared for how slow I would come back. To be fair my weekly mileage and long run mileage are a few weeks ahead of where I thought they’d be when I restarted running at the New Year, but my pace is well off. This fact was brought to bear as I took a bandit lap around Hagg Lake before my volunteer duties began at the race yesterday (read the Hagg Lake RD’s recap here). My time for 1 lap was significantly slower than either of last years, when I was running the full course. Despite my dismal informal effort on the trail on Saturday I did really well working the cowbell (the volunteer work is required for entry into Western States, which will be my first attempt at 100m this June), and April not only PRed at the 50 km distance (her 3^rd), but also won an award for the cutest trail bunny.

April shows the Mud who’s boss at Hagg Lake (photo from Brian Conghan photography)

I really enjoy running ultras. I’m sick of running them so slowly. As in every case, ‘slowly’ is defined in the relative sense. Point being I’d like to be faster. After grading a minor mound of Intro to Atmospheric Sciences homework this morning I headed out Bald hill for some unstructured speedwork. The sunshine was too much to ignore and plans for recovery day went out the window. What an awesome run! I tried to do something along the lines of 800s, but let the topography and how my body felt determine my effort. Bald hill is a great area for this since there are plenty of flats, as opposed the notoriously vertiginous McDonald Forest where I usually train. After a quick warmup up and down Mulkey Ridge I started a series of 800s-ish about 25 min in to the run. I pushed hard up the summit and just felt awesome. Did I mention that running is amazingly fun?

Sundays Bald hill/Mulkey Ridge run according to Garmin 405

It always seems like the best runs follow the worst runs and vice versa. Since I’m currently concentrating on adding mileage to my weeks in preparation for Western States (I just got my first 50 mile week of the year, in February!) I’m trying to avoid structured speedwork at the track, which last year resulted in nagging hamstring issues. These issues were most likely a result of ill advised (read: overly optimistic) paces for my 800 and 1600 m intervals. I have, however, been doing a few tempo runs to try to test my fitness relative to last year, which was the fastest I’ve ever been. The results of these tempo runs, plus last years PR on the Hagg Lakecourse, led me to skip the race this year.

Pace per mile versus distance (this years efforts in red, last years PRs in black)

Average heart rate versus distance (this years efforts in red, last years PRs in black)

            The above plots show that my average pace this year (red dots) for distances between 5km and 10 km is something like a minute per mile slower than last years PRs (black dots), and my heart rate is something 10-15 bpm lower than last years.