My first 20 miler

I ran my first 20 mile run yesterday. I have been very nervous about running my first 20 miler. I decided I should do it with a running group. So I went with my friend who runs with the Portland Marathon Training group. I picked my goal race time of 4 hour and ran with that group. My friend said they usually run an 11 min pace. Way slow for me, but I figure this is my first 20 mile run. I thought slow and relaxed is the way to go. WRONG! We ended up holding a 12:36 pace the whole way.The whole way!!! Which would have been fine except it was on a very hilly trail. Sounds like a nice relaxing pace, but going that slow down the hills is painful. For one my knees hurt, not from running but from braking on the down hills. Ugh!

We started out at 12:55 for the first mile. OK maybe this is our warm up mile. Next mile 12:42. Seriously? So after 4 miles there is an aide station. I’m thinking we grab some water and stop maybe 10-20 seconds. Nope 5-10 min break. What? Every 4 miles we had an aide station. It was like running 5-4 mile runs. OK maybe jogs. My heart rate stayed at 140-150(if it was a big hill). I would have run ahead expect I had no idea where I was or how to get back to the car. When the first hour rolled by we had gone 5 miles. Holy crap. I normally have 7 miles done in that time. Help me. When hour 2 rolled by and we only had 10 miles I thought I was going to die of boredom. Now granted this was a nice relaxing run. Which I don’t normally do. But to take 4 hours and 6 mins to run 20 miles was cruel. I now have no doubt that I can complete a marathon. But there is no way I can run it that slow.  The thing that redeemed this run... was my friend. I had fun joking and talking with her. That was the best part, getting to hang out with her.

So I have learned that I can do 20 miles just fine, so the next 20 miler I will run at a little quicker pace. Maybe 10 minute pace, just to force myself to hold a steady pace and feel good after my long run. I’d rather run it at 9 min pace, but I don’t have confidence in my endurance to hold that pace for that long. But I am raring to try. I think I need to run a 20 miler at 9 min pace. Because if I can hold that on a practice run I should be able to run 8:30 on race day. An that my friends would be wonderful.