I decided a few weeks ago that I would run a half marathon distance on the day that the women's and men's Olympic marathon was held. What I didn't realize was that the marathon was run on the morning of August 24th in Beijing, which is August 23rd here. So I did get in the half marathon on total distance today but it was run the day after the women's Olympic marathon.
The workout started with a 2 mile warm up and down, on the trail across San Fransisquito Rd. from the Grass Mountain trail head. Then I did the Grass Mountain interval format that we were doing last fall, which is 1 minute at interval pace (95-100% VO2max) followed by one mintue power hiking until I reach the top. Then jog down. It is 2.8 miles to the top of Grass Mountain. The elevation at the start is 3668ft and the top is 4610ft.
We went up and down twice, which is our standard format. When I say "we" I mean Clay Patten and me. His son Zac came along and today they both biked the entire workout (13 miles). Clay would get ahead of me on the flatter areas and I would catch him on the steeper inclines. He helped pull me along to a record for this workout. Last year I was running in the 26 minute range. Today I ran 25:59 for the first set and 25:20 for the second set. My max HR on the first set was 178 and 183 on the second. By the end of my last set I couldn't even get my HR under 160 on the rest interval.
How do I know all this information? My new Garmin Forerunner 305 is awesome. I upload all my workouts to my PC and it graphs every possible data set for me. What does that mean? More numbers to play with (speed, distance, HR, elevation, grade, pace) For those of you interested, amazon.com has one of the best deals right now.
Oh, I almost forgot. On the way down the hill on the last set we were stopped by a HUGE rattlesnake crossing the path. It was the first I have ever seen and it was BIG 5-6 ft long and as thick as my wrist.
Cool Stat for the day: Over the whole 13 miles today there was a total of 3000ft ascent!
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