I’ve been giving Friday’s post about continuing to increase my mileage some more thought. This morning it occurred to me that I wrote that post coming off a cutback week, so of course I was feeling good about my mileage. I’m still feeling good, but I’m thinking after 3-4 consecutive weeks at 80 mpw, I may have a different view of how “easy” this mileage is. I’m probably better off making sure my body adjusts to this increased workload before worrying about moving up another level.
And as Bill also suggested, if I just focus on bumping my long run (currently at 17 miles), increasing my weekly mileage will take care of itself.
With a lot of my running partners heading just down the road for the D3 cross country championships, I ended up flip-flopping my “normal” Saturday/Sunday routine. Saturday I ended up running a 16 miler by myself. I kept the pace comfortable and was a little surprised to be running 7:45-8:00 pace. That’s probably 15-20 seconds quicker than I normally run. Being on the bike path instead of rolling dirt paths probably helped. That run gave me 83 miles for the week on 7 runs.
Yesterday was a small 12 mile group run around Fort Snelling and Pike Island. Since the pace was easier than our normal group runs, I decided to go a little longer today; 11 miles on the trails.
Alright the women’s race just finished and let me just say these women need to work on running 6,010 meters instead of 6,000 meters. They are literally stopping on the timing mat and standing there – or they’re collapsing. With the percent that collapse, it’s no wonder that it took so long to allow women to run longer than 1500 meters. Officials probably thought about half of them were going to die at the end of a race. I know I’m not the only one to notice this because we’ve talked about it on numerous runs.
Finally, with technology, I'm not sure why it takes me so long to get around to posting photos. Here's Kinsey as Dorthy and Katie as a princess. It was actually somewhat warm this year and we didn't have to wear our winter coats while trick or treating.Quote of the day;
“I don’t think total mileage is very important. To me, it was the way in which I ran those miles which was important.” – Derek Clayton
4 comments:
Were you being facetious when you suggested that "these women need to learn to run 6,010 meters instead of 6,000 meters"? The more accurate explanation for runners collapsing at the finish is a drop in blood pressure. I'm not an expert, but the explanation goes more or less like this: while running, your heart rate is elevated and blood is pumping rapidly in the leg muscles. Once you cease running (cross the finish line), the pumping in the legs stops, your heart rate drops rapidly, and blood pools in the legs, which in turn causes your blood pressure to drop. This fall in blood pressure results in the collapse. This explanation has been addressed several times online, especially with reference to the idea of "heat exhaustion" (see http://www.letsrun.com/forum/report.php?board=1&id=2164544&thread=2164134&page=0).
Plus, didn't McDougal collapse at the finish? It's not just the women.
Well I was talking about 2 different issues; 1) women stopping right at the finish line (hence running exactly 6,000 meters versus running through the chute) and 2) people collapsing at the finish. I didn't see the men's race, so I can't comment on that. The picture I did see of McDougal, it didn't look like he was lying on the timing mat.
As for your explanation on the cause of collapsing, why don't we see more people collapsing at road races? It seems like it's more prominent in cross-country, which is typically a colder time of year for the sport.
McDougal, Collapsed well beyond the finish line. I would estimate 10,020 meters
Nice!!! He left a full 20 meters for the other 249 runners behind him - very considerate of him.
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