...when your long run is 30 miles, which is what mine was this week. I considered going up to run the Wild Duluth 50k, as I love the Superior Hiking Trail, but opted to save the driving time and stress. Instead, I went out to Hyland this morning and did four loops of the standard Friday morning loop. Normally I don't like repeating loops, as my OCD leads me to pay far too much attention to time, but I actually wanted to pick up the pace gradually throughout this run, so the loop approach worked out well. Plus, this gave me a chance to return to the car to grab some fuel.
The loop is a little over 7.5 miles, including a pass over the ski hill on the way out and again heading back in. Starting in the dark is definitely the way to go for these really long runs, but the various crashings through the brush did startle me on a few occasions. I literally almost ran into a deer at one point. I also heard some kind of bird of prey making a killing, and later in the morning saw the aftermath -- looked like a hawk snared a rabbit.
The descending sequence went well: 64 min, 59, 56, 53. Somehow I've gotten to the point where a nearly four hour run does not intimidate me, and in fact I felt really good over the last couple of loops. I'll probably do a couple more runs of 4+ hours, in two and four weeks, with shorter long runs on the weeks in between.
This week...shooting for some treadmill climbing on Tuesday, a fartlek Thursday, and 20 or so on Sunday.
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