We had a split group today due to the Race to Robie Creek. Brent, Paul, Loren and I were not participating in that race, so we met at 6:30 am at Municipal Park for our scheduled 20 miler. This was our fourth, and thankfully last of those before we begin to taper down toward race day for the Ogden Marathon.
We started off going east on the Greenbelt and crossed the orange foot bridge to the south side of the river. Just before crossing the bridge, we saw another doe. I never see these things on my own, but fortunately the other guys always point them out to me. From there we followed the dirt trail through the habitat reserve to Barber Park. We had to avoid the bridge construction by running through Bown Crossing and taking the canal bank for part of the route. From Barber we turned back west and followed the trail to the construction barracade before turning around and doubling back to Barber. From Barber we reversed our original route through Bown. This route was Brent's version of a rat maze! The first roughly 11 miles was full of brief stops for various reasons; shoe issues (Paul), dropped water bottles (Brent and Shane), and malfunctioning iPod (Shane).
We ran west on the south side of the river past BSU to Ann Morrison before crossing back to the north side of the river. I needed two restroom stops in the space of about two miles, dealing with GI issues that I seldom have to deal with on a run. Between these two stops and the others earlier in the run, I never settled into a comfortable rhythm. I was running with Brent most of this time, and our splits were all over the place. When we weren't dealing with stops we were maintaining low 8-minute miles, but several splits were much slower.
We continued west and took the dirt path to Veteran's Park and then back onto the Greenbelt briefly before making our turnaround at 15.75 miles just prior to the wooden bridge just east of Willow Lane's softball fields. I was getting really fatigued at this point, and I knew the last 4 miles were going to be a struggle. Brent pulled ahead of me for the rest of the return trip and I tried hard to just keep him in sight.
I finally reached Municipal again and had was able to finish the last two miles a little better at 8:25s each. It took me 2 hours, 55 minutes in total with an average pace of 8:34. This was a bit discouraging to me to finish the last of the big runs on a down note. Oh well, I logged the miles, right?
We all returned home for a quick shower and change before heading down to Fort Boise to see off Trever, Ryan, Kerry, Trina, and Lenae who were all running Robie. After the start of the race, several of us took the bus up to the finish and arrived just in time to see Ryan shortly after he had finished. He had a great race and notched a new Robie PR. We watched the others as they finished and everyone did a great job considering it was a very warm day for this race.
After everyone was in, we joined the party in the park for a beer (or several) and had a great time hanging out. It was a long, but fun day!
We started off going east on the Greenbelt and crossed the orange foot bridge to the south side of the river. Just before crossing the bridge, we saw another doe. I never see these things on my own, but fortunately the other guys always point them out to me. From there we followed the dirt trail through the habitat reserve to Barber Park. We had to avoid the bridge construction by running through Bown Crossing and taking the canal bank for part of the route. From Barber we turned back west and followed the trail to the construction barracade before turning around and doubling back to Barber. From Barber we reversed our original route through Bown. This route was Brent's version of a rat maze! The first roughly 11 miles was full of brief stops for various reasons; shoe issues (Paul), dropped water bottles (Brent and Shane), and malfunctioning iPod (Shane).
We ran west on the south side of the river past BSU to Ann Morrison before crossing back to the north side of the river. I needed two restroom stops in the space of about two miles, dealing with GI issues that I seldom have to deal with on a run. Between these two stops and the others earlier in the run, I never settled into a comfortable rhythm. I was running with Brent most of this time, and our splits were all over the place. When we weren't dealing with stops we were maintaining low 8-minute miles, but several splits were much slower.
We continued west and took the dirt path to Veteran's Park and then back onto the Greenbelt briefly before making our turnaround at 15.75 miles just prior to the wooden bridge just east of Willow Lane's softball fields. I was getting really fatigued at this point, and I knew the last 4 miles were going to be a struggle. Brent pulled ahead of me for the rest of the return trip and I tried hard to just keep him in sight.
I finally reached Municipal again and had was able to finish the last two miles a little better at 8:25s each. It took me 2 hours, 55 minutes in total with an average pace of 8:34. This was a bit discouraging to me to finish the last of the big runs on a down note. Oh well, I logged the miles, right?
We all returned home for a quick shower and change before heading down to Fort Boise to see off Trever, Ryan, Kerry, Trina, and Lenae who were all running Robie. After the start of the race, several of us took the bus up to the finish and arrived just in time to see Ryan shortly after he had finished. He had a great race and notched a new Robie PR. We watched the others as they finished and everyone did a great job considering it was a very warm day for this race.
After everyone was in, we joined the party in the park for a beer (or several) and had a great time hanging out. It was a long, but fun day!
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