First, this was a great run. I ran strong the whole time and never even got the usual "transitional lightheaded" I usually get around 12-14 miles. It was 13 degrees this morning and I opted to wait until later in the day when it "warmed up" to 18. As a result, I ate my usual Sunday pancake and egg feast a few hours before my run instead of after. I think this could have helped. I took a gel at 17 miles, but it wasn't an emergency. By the way, orange burst Gu gets a big thumbs up as do Bob Seger, Jackson Browne, and Wilson Pickett. I'm going to miss my music during the marathon.
My pace was good today. I thought I'd consider today a total victory if each of the four laps were at less than 46 minutes. My times and heart rates were 45:00 (147), 45:11 (152), 45:04 (153), and 45:39 (158). I felt strong the whole way. In the latest mile, I was anxiously awaiting being done though, but I think this is just my mind saying, "OK buddy, you said we'd be done at 20, so let's stop screwing around!" This always seems to happen when the end is in sight.
I messed around with the heart rate limits again today. I set the alarm for 155 max for most of the first three laps, but ran through the beeping a few times in the second and third laps before I adjusted it to 160 at mile 12.5. After having to slow down several times on the 4th lap (which I believe caused the 30-40 second slower lap time) with beeping at 160, I upped it to 166 and ran comfortably until the end. A few gentle uphills required ~163 to keep my pace. In general I think once I've figure out a pace that will let me smoothly transition up to 166 by the end (Pfitz's 83% MHR max for long runs), it's best just to keep the pace and let the heart rate follow.
20 mile run comparison. These were nearly identical runs. The only difference is the recalibration of the foot pod which caused me to run a little further today. At the four lap mark, however, I was 3:21 faster than two weeks ago. After lap 4, I tacked on 1.5 miles today to make it 20 total. Two weeks ago, the watch said I only had 1.3 to go, but despite the extra distance, I was still about a minute and a half faster overall.
The graph shows heart rate and EPOC, which stand for Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption. It's supposed to describe your accumulated oxygen debt and measure how hard a workout was. I just think of it as a cumulative effort function based on time spent at a given heart rate. I was a little faster (~10 seconds per mile) at a slightly lower heart rate (154 verus 156 average) and EPOC.My intuition tells me this is from improved running economy. I just seem to have found a groove for running faster after the intervals and the 10K. Running easier at a given pace is something like learning to juggle. I can juggle now, but I can't explain what I'm doing differently. I believe that Tim Noakes (author of Lore of Running) is right to emphasize the neuromuscular aspects of running. The brain's role is probably underappreciated since it isn't as easy to express as the oxygen consumption model (the more O2 you can utilize the faster you can go). We tend to use models in proportion to how well we understand them and often use them beyond their ability to explain observed phenomena.
Lake loop distance. I've become rather obsessed with how far it is around this lake. The conventional wisdom is that it is between 4.6 and 4.8 miles, which ought to be close enough, but not for me! Today the foot pod said between 4.60 and 4.68. STraM said between 4.57 and 4.62.
One thing that annoys me a great deal about the suunto t6 is that the distance on the watch at the end of your run doesn't agree with what STraM shows after you download it to your computer. I stopped the run when the watch read 20.01 miles. For both this 20-miler and the last one it showed 19.89 after downloading into STraM. It's half a percent difference, but damn it, I did 20!
I attempted to use my forerunner 201 as a cross check on distance. I abandoned it last fall since it frequently lost signal due to line of sight. Along the trail it was useless. I thought I'd give it another shot in the winter when the trees were bare. It didn't give its weak signal indication but the distances were poor. It showed 4.44, 4.31, 4.30, and 4.38 for the four laps plus 1.51 for the extra out and back, giving 18.94 total. I loaded the data into SportsTracks which lets you look at the routes overlayed on satellite imagery. You could see significant deviations from the path and short cuts (like across the lake). (Unfortunately, much of the path is too tree covered in the imagery to use http://gmap-pedometer.com or google earth to find the distance.)
It shouldn't bother me that much, but 45:13 per lap on average divided by 4.6 miles is a 9:49 min/mi pace. If it's 4.8 miles, that's 9:25 min/mi. It's a significant difference if your goal is to run a 4 hr marathon, which requires a 9:09 min/mi pace. The truth probably lies in between.
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