Sunday, June 13, 2010

Six Days Till Lake City and the San Jual Solstice 50 Miler

I haven't been writing much lately for probably two reasons. The first reason would be that a lot of my time has been spent running so I haven't had much time to write. The second reason would be that I haven't been having too many issues injury wise to slow me down and or complain about either. All in all things have been going well, so I've been quiet.

The miles have been stacking up. According to my Garmin and how it logs a week, this past week I did 86.4 miles. I had a great 31 mile run last weekend and this weekend I did two 20 milers back to back. I've been feeling yesterday's run all day today though especially in my quads which just feel thrashed.

On the bright side I have a nice light week this week leading into the race at Lake City. I've been bouncing back and recovering fairly well these past few weeks so I think that I will be in good shape. My time last year in the race was 15:44:46 and that was in that nasty storm. Originally this year I was shooting for 13:45 to finish, feeling that would be a respectable improvement over last year and also very doable if the weather cooperates. Well... I have a new target now. My coach wants to see me pull that one in at 12:30, what he considers and A+ effort.

12:30... That means I need to drop well, about three hours from last years time. Okay... Melissa will be crewing for me and I do not intend to take any long breaks at the aid stations so I am planning to get back an hour there. So if the weather cooperates AND I push it hard I think that I can do the 12:30 as directed. I spent part of the night doing some fancy math to compute the splits I will need to make and I think it is doable.

For me this race is important as it is my first race since getting injured in Salida in March. This is also a race that I just like so I am looking forward to doing it for that reason alone. It will be worth running the 50 miles hard just for a break out of town and away from all of my normal runs, routes, etc. I really can't wait to go.

Anyway, my new splits as I have computed them to fish in 12:30 are as follows.

Mile 7.5 Alpine Gulch Aid Station 2:05
Mile 15.7 Williams Creek Campground 3:46
Mile 21.8 Carson Aid Station 5:23
Mile 31 Divide/Yurt Aid Station 8:12
Mile 40 Slumgullion Aid Station 9:54
Mile 46.5 Vickers Aid Station 11:32
Mile 50 Finish 12:30

Before you think the times sound off or slow or what not... take a look at this elevation profile of the race. Then you can see why it might take two hours or more to go the first 7.5 miles. :)

http://www.swarpa.net/~danforth/photos/sjs50/profile_sjs50.gif

Again, I can't wait till next weekend, I think this is going to be a blast!

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