Last Big Week

Well, I figured out this is my last big week before St. George. This coming week I have to travel to Miami on Monday to speak at a conference and then we have the family thing in Eagar this coming weekend. So that leaves four training days in the middle of the week. I'll probably do speed work, which I need badly. OK, now back to this week.

I ran four times during the week at low heart rate, 90 minutes each, average pace 14:33, 13:53, 13:09 and 12:56, running MTuThF. I kept improving all week long so I was encouraged by that. I thought I might be able to run 20 this morning at 12:00 pace, shooting for an 11:00 pace at St. George. It wasn't to be. I ran 15 and some change at a 12:03 pace. I intended to go further, but first my legs started to go wooden, then my hand shook when I took a salt tablet. I don't know if that is serious or not, but it worried me enough that I quit. Plus it was raining and I was soaked to the bone. Not that it cooled off much when it rained.

The goal at St. George is definitely 5:00 at this point. Byron, Marleen's brother, gave me a spreadsheet calculator where you plug in your goal time and it tells you all the splits based on the difficulty of the terrain and the point in the race. Happy to forward it to anybody who wants it.

I've been watching the updates on the Wasatch 100, which started yesterday morning at 5:00 a.m. somewhere above Ogden and finishes up somewhere south of Provo. The winner had a time of about 18-1/2 hours, second place (a local Utah guy) an hour behind that, third place two hours behind second. The guy I follow, an ultra runner named Davey Crockett (his real name), is in 40th place and pretty much on his goal time of 28-1/2 hours. He should be finishing in an hour or two. I have no idea what it takes to run a race like that, but Mr. Crockett runs 7 or 8 of them a year. He lives in Saratoga Springs, which is on the other side of Utah Lake past Lehi. I can't seem to even run a marathon and these guys run four of them in a row, over mountain trails at high altitude all night long. They are a different breed. About 400 runners started the race and at least 250 have already dropped out. The top woman runner came in at about 23-1/2 hours, good enough for 10th place. The second woman was 12 minutes behind her, which at that distance is considered a dead heat.

UPDATE: Crockett came in at #42, third in his age division (50+), in 28:33, 3 minutes over his target. Big day for him. First place runner shattered the old record by 1:05, second place runner (the local guy, Karl Meltzer) also broke the record by 23 minutes. The second place runner has already won three major 100s this year. The guy who won Western States, the world series of 100 mile runs, came in at 22:18, almost 4 hours behind the winner. That is how good this field was, probably the best field of any 100 this year.