Big Fire: Controlled and Extinguished

Today, it was time to run Big Fire again.
For you non-roguers - Big Fire is a 10 mile workout up out and back on Shoal Creek. We start at Shoal Creek and 35th, and run up to 183 and back. 10 miles.

It's the workout that, when you first get your long run schedule for the trainins season, you look for hoping they forgot to add it to the calendar so you can escape the wrath of hell that it imposes on you. You dread the day as it gets closer, and closer and secretly hope you'll break your leg for a day or two, or that the government declares marshall law and doesn't allow anyone out of their zipcodes.

Here's the thing with Big Fire. Yeah, it's only 10 miles, but you run each mile progressively faster until Mile 8 and 9 are what I would call "stupid fast", and Mile 10 is listed as GO AS FAST AS YOU CAN. (meaning Mile 10 should blow you up).

I've done this run 4 or 5 times before, and every time, about 1 to 1.5 miles into the last fews, I blow up, put my tail between my legs and slow down by about 1 min per mile, as I embarrasingly trot to the finish line.

Today, these were my time per mile goals:
Mile 1 - 8:15
Mile 2 - 8min
Mile 3 - 7:45
Mile 4 - 7:30
Mile 5 - 7:15
Mile 6 - 7min
Mile 7 - 6:45
Mile 8 - 6:30
Mile 9 - 6:30
Mile 10 - FAST (or, KA-BLAMMO!)

When my alarm went off at 4:11am, i turned on the weather radar and there was nasty rain coming. I quickly took the dogs out to pee, then came back in for food. My drive over to Shaol Creek was wet, and while we waited to take off, it rained nicely. I kind of hoped the rain would stick around for the run, as drizzle is better than post rain weather, which equals a steaming sauna as the heat dries the road and makes it REALLY humid. The drizzle stopped at around Mile 2.5, but thankfully returned at around Mile 8ish. Thank god for that.

Without boring you with all the details, let me tell you that to run a sub 20 min 5K (3.1 miles), one needs to run 6min 24second pace.
Chad and I were off a few seconds here and there, but mostly we hit our times, or were pretty close.

The critical last 3 or 4 miles is where it really counts. Can you sustain and not blow up?

I'm happy to report that I did not blow up! I hit both Mile 8 and Mile 9, and still had enough left to run a 6min07second 10th mile that included a mean hill at the 0.7 mile point.

I was really happy with my performance, and have finally defeated Big Fire.

THE END.

P.S. I saw another snake on the side of the road again. The others that saw it could not figure out if it was dead, either. Nedra and I both saw it and decided it to claim it was alive even though it was just lying on the side of the road.
- It also turns out that last week, one guy saw 2 snakes, and one girl saw 3 snakes on the road. I only saw one and thought it was alive. Chris claimed today that it's head was smushed, which he quickly followed up with: "Mike, that's why I didn't point out the snake as we ran by it. But if you like, I'll be happy to point out all roadkill as we run from now on."
I thought to myself: "Yeah, you got me on that one little ufcker, but I'm going to blow your ass up on the next run like I did today with half a mile to go."