Twenty Miles Indoors

NSP Community Center 20 mi in 2:54:11, pace 8:43. 270 laps, 1080 corners. Splits 8:39, 8:34, 8:57, 8:30, 8:50, 8:37, 9:08, 8:32, 8:52, 8:35, 9:06, 8:34, 8:52, 8:37, 9:01, 8:28, 8:51, 8:36, 8:56, 7:58.

Water after every even mile, gels at 2, 6, 10, & 14.

I went about as fast as my scrawny old legs would propel me today, or so it felt. Breathing was easy, mostly five footfalls per breath, but my legs seemed to put a limit on speed. I have a theory about that, more below. Otherwise I felt good throughout, and probably could have kept up this pace for another 10k to finish a marathon, as suggested by the speedier last mile. I forgot to wear a pair of nylon underpants under my running shorts, and am feeling the resulting chafing now. I did wear dot band-aids on my nipples, though, and nothing is bleeding. (Are we into the realm of TMI yet?) By and large it was a fine long run, leading up to the Zoom! Yah! Yah! Marathon.

In the last two days my waking heart rate, normally about 48, was 44 and 42. I haven’t had a HR as low as 42 for a long time. Slight bradycardia, probably from the thalidomide. This happened when I took thalidomide in 2004 as well; and some of my logs from that time show that I couldn’t run quite as fast as I thought I should. I didn’t wear a heart monitor for this long run, because I don’t really like it squeezing my chest, but I suspect that my HR was a bit lower than usual, resulting in less blood flow to my legs and therefore a lower limit on speed. Fortunately, I’ll be off thalidomide for six days before the marathon.