20 Mile Shrup felt like a 16 mile run

My favorite part of today’s run: Running over the FAR WEST bridge over MOPAC at 6:30am, looking south at Downtown Austin in the far away distance, knowing I’d come from there, and I was headed back there. It looked so so far away, I felt like a runner. A real runner. One of those other people call weirdos.

Saturday’s alarm went off at 3:07am. I pressed the snooze button once, and forced myself out of bed at 3:15. it was tough to force feed myself two bowls of Kashi cereal, but it was necessary as the 20 miler(32km) I was about to run, would require digested energy. Talk about gag reflexes that early in the morning. I eventually got all my stuff ready, and got to the annex at 4:40am. A quick visit to the port-o-let, and some hamstring and quad stretching, and we were on our way.

On the menu, 20 miles. Out on Lake Austin Blvd, to Hula Hut, Right on Enfield, then up Pecos to 35th, then up Balcones to 2222, and up to mesa. In total, 10.25 with about 6 of those on the not so friendly rolling hills of Pecos and Balcones. Once we reached Mesa, Javier and I were at the front, and his GPW was reading a n average pace for the first hour and 20 minutes of 8:44 per mile. Not bad for those nasty hills.

Not far behind us were Chris and Chad, so upon their arrival to the water stop at mesa and Greystone, we took off together down towards shoal creek. Once we reached Shoal creek, I asked Chris what his GPS said in total distance, and he replied 12 and a quarter. Coach Ruthie wanted us to run the last 8 miles of our 20 miler in Marathon Goal Pace, so I accelerated to what I assumed could bee my MGP. I actually have no idea what it feels like, because we have trained for it, and mostly either done 8:15 easy pace, or 6:30min pace or faster on my track workouts.
I quickly dropped Chris and Javier, then after Amy’s water stop on Shoal creek and White Rock, Chad eventually dropped off too. I would later find out that they were being wise.

Long story short, I kept up that pace up to about mile 18, where Duane was manning last water stop. Stopping there definitely took some wind out of my sails, as I probably slowed my pace down by 20 seconds per mile for the last 2 miles down Speedway through UT campus and Congress.

I arrived at the annex with 2hours and 46 seconds on my clock for the total run. There were 7 water stops, of which I spent about about 2 minutes at each, maybe 1min45.
Anyway, net running time came in around 2 hours 32 – 2 hours 34 minutes, putting my average pace at 7:36ish.

While talking to Chris at the annex he told me when I took off, we were already running close to 7:30 second pace, (my MGP is 7:24), so, this means I sped up to a 7 – 7:10 pace for the last 8 miles. I’m an idiot. But I felt good, and ran well, so maintaining a 7’ish pace for 8 miles after 12 miles of hills, is certainly encouraging.

I’m not sure if it’s because we started to friggin’ early (5AM) so my body was asleep for the first hour, or if it’s all the running I have been doing, but this run felt good. So good, it felt like I had run about 16 miles, and not 20. It’s encouraging, but I’m not overconfident. The 18 mile LAB on Sat 25 Aug, will be a better barometer.