Friday, April 10, 2009

Ome Takamizu 30k


Your longest runs should never be more than 50% of your weekly mileage according to conventional running wisdom.  I suppose this is even more true if the long run is a rugged trail race like last Sunday's Ome Takamizu 30k. 

The past two Ome Takamizu races I had fared so well. This year I followed the same strategy as the last two times -- going out slowly and surging past people over the final two-thirds of the run. Through about the 22k mark everything unfolded as it had the previous two runs and as I moved up to 25th place. But then I simply ran out of strength. 

The thing that puzzles me is not why I ran out of strength this year - it is how I could have done so well the past two races on such little training (50k or less per week of running).  My theory is that I had been doing so much more ironman bicycle training (and a few more mountain trail runs).