6:10

As I look back over the past couple of weeks, this may shape up to be a boring blog entry, nothing too exciting really in my running life.

Quick update on my lunar trek preparation over the past few weeks. I've been running 60-70 mile weeks for the past three weeks with at least one 20+ mile run each week, and feeling great doing it. The 60 mile mark seems to be a magic number for me, as when I exceed that number I start dropping pounds and feel my endurance improves dramatically.

Lunar Trek is approaching quickly, and I think I'm in a good position for this run. I've set a conservative goal of 6:10 for 50k, which I think may be conservative based on my recent long runs and results from last year's run. I don't want to set my goal too high though, so I think this is a reasonable mark.

I'm also considering a longer run, the Heartland 50 Miler in October, but I would also like to do a road marathon this fall, possibly the Kansas City Marathon. I'll have to make the decision within the next couple of weeks as Heartland is filling up fast, but I'm torn between turning in a *fast* marathon time and running an even longer ultra. I wish I could wait to see how I'm running in Late September, but unfortunately that's not possible.

Finally, a thanks to Gary Henry for putting on a great run Friday night and Saturday morning. Gary's going to Lunar Trek as well, and knew a training route that is similar to the hilly gravel roads we'll be running in Scandia, KS. The route is a 13 mile out and back for a total of 26 miles. The first 4.5 miles are on the levee in north Lawrence with the rest on somewhat hilly gravel roads. Here's a map of our route from my Garmin:



View 26toLinwood in a larger map

Gary, Brad, Jim, Danny, and I met up at 11pm at the 0 Mile marker of the levee trail, and headed out for our late night marathon. The first 5 miles went easy, as the levee trail is smooth, small gravel, and can be run at a track pace. After that the roads were covered in large gravel and medium sized hills. I underestimated how weird it would be to run that far at night, through miles of empty country. I hydrated properly though, and took plenty of salt and felt good.

Just after 1 AM we pulled into Linwood, KS population: 374. The local bar was still open, and Gary had staged an aid station across the street in his truck. We refueled and reloaded, while getting strange looks from bar patrons, and the local cops... come to think of it I can't really blame them. It's probably a reasonable reaction to five guys wearing headlamps running into a small town after midnight. I did enjoy their music which involved an eclectic mix of hip-hop and country.

After refueling, and an incident involving a broken hydration pack, we were back on the road. The miles went by fast on our way home. We ran together for a while, but with about 7 miles to go Jim Beiter and I decided to put in some fast miles at the end. Looking at my Garmin, we averaged between 8:30 and 9:00 for our miles on the way in.. which showed me I had made some major gains. We finished with my garmin reading 4:25 of running time for just under 26 miles, we'll call it 26.2 :) (compared to a 5:03 at Free State Marathon grrrr).

This is the main reason I think 6:10 may be possible and conservative. Five additional miles in an one hour and 45 minutes was definitely doable Friday night, but who knows what early July will be, so I'll be conservative with my goal on my first ultra.