Sunday, February 17, 2008

Armadillo Dash Half Marathon is Next

Armadillo Dash is coming up next Sunday. Based on last years results - depending on who shows up of course - I may have a shot at the Master's title and maybe even place in the race. This race is a tune-up race on the road to Boston.

Feeling fully recovered from Houston now and had a great run today. This was the first run I've had where it makes a 6 mpm Boston (if good weather - a big if) look within reach. 21 1/2 miles averageing 6:33 pace at a fairly low heartrate akin to a long run pace. It was very encouraging to see especially knowing there is still 9 weeks to go to get faster. I had planned to up the pace at the end to marathon pace but each time I tried I bonked and walked a little - that extra push just wasn't there today - so I settled down to the long run pace and finished up the run.

I plan to experiment a little with the carb deplete/load thing so after todays 20+ miler I started a minimum carb diet which I plan to keep until Thursday then switch to carbs. I'm currious to see if benefits for a 1/2 marathon - clearly it is meant to give endurance - but for Houston it seemed to give speed a well so we'll see Sunday whether it delivers. Race plan is to run by heartrate after a couple miles maintaining ~90-91% max HR.

2 comments:

runfaster-nj said...

21 1/2 miles @ 6:33 pace is a great run. What is your goal for the Half on Sunday? Interesting blog, I found it from letsrun.
I find your write-ups about your carbo deplete/load particularly of interest since I am seriously considering doing some sort of deplete/load for Boston myself since in all four of my marathons I have run out of gas between 18-22. -John

kayry said...

The goal really is to keep 169 bpm on the HRM and see what it delivers - not at all an easy goal and it will take my all to do it.

Based on Tuesday's progressive run I'm thinking that will give me sub1:17 but the wildcard is what the deplete/load does or does not do. It was a ~10-15 second/mile turbo-charge at Houston in my estimation - but I did only 4 day deplete instead of 10 and I'm not tapering the mileage all that much - just a little - so we'll see.

I'll add something after the race about how this deplete/load did on a 1/2 marathon.