20 miles @ 10:11/mi. Murdock Canal trail north.
I was only thinking maybe 14-18 miles when I started, but had 20 in the back of my mind if I felt up to it. The sun didn't rise over Mt. Timpanogos until about mile 8. Even then it was overcast so it never really got too warm.
I discovered the Murdock half marathon was on the trail this morning. I had a good head start on them. The first 8 runners eventually passed me, but the last few of them took a while to pull away. I don't think this was a very big field, at least not many elite runners.
The race turned south of the trail with a few miles to go. I stayed on the trail. I wanted to explore. I had never been this far north on the trail before. The part up to Highland Glen park was nice, but I didn't like the 1.5 or so miles after that until the 10 mile turn around. Maybe next time I'll run loops around the Highland Park trail to get to 10 miles before turning back.
The first 9 miles felt pretty good. As I mentioned, I didn't like the 10th mile much running along the shoulder of the road. The return trip went from hard, to harder, to hang on. I ran out of gas (felt pretty tired, breathing hard), then the wheels came off (my legs started feeling dead). My pace gradually dropped about 2 min/mile. I took 3 shot bloks twice on the way back, and drank plenty of water, but still the last 3-4 miles I was just willing myself forward. I kept thinking this was good mental training, as well as physical end-or-marathon training.
The bright spot is that I had no injury-related pain after the run. I was beat, and took a while to catch my breath and feel enough energy to do other things, but I don't feel like I did myself any damage.
My Hobble Creek half time last week was 1:42. I remember thinking if I were to hold that pace for a marathon it would be 3:24 (2 x 1:42). My time today was 3:24. It doesn't mean anything. Just interesting.
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