Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Which race to run this weekend?

I have two options this weekend with two possible targets. First is 60k race on Saturday. With the blister disaster in marathon, my soles are not smoothened yet as the old dead skin peels off. So trying anything long distance could be disasterous, especially on wet coarse central park loop this weekend. However, it would be nice to beat just the marathon distance by running 27miles or something. I had thought about this before but now that the race is coming close, it feels like wishful thinking. The only evidence that I can do something ultra is really the back to back two 20mi runs I did in past. But that was a while back. Even though legs feel fresh they are not that fresh two weeks after the marathon. Moreover, I have never DNFed a race before and it would suck to start now, however crazy the race.

The other option is really basically "giving in" to temptation to race the way I had succumbed to doing a PR in the miler in September. After the two miler races, the fastest percentile PR race I have done is a 4miler at 7:29 pace all the way back in 2006. It would be fun to start post-marathon races with a bang and break the PR. Looking back at the logs, my average HR for that race over 30min was solid 191bpm which is insane. Barefoot running is nothing compared to the kind if toture that must have been. Funny how I don't remember it at all! Anyway, sometimes mile PRs do not translate to faster spped at longer distances. If beat this 4mi PR, I would know for sure that I can in fact translate the barefoot training to beat all shod PRs upto marathon distance. Marathon will have to wait for now.

Second option is tempting but not very smart. However, after the slow marathon, I could use a fast and stupid race. May be I will take it easy till weekend and see if 60k race makes sense for some kind of modified objective. If not then I will run the 4miler on Sunday.

BF in ny for 764mi

No comments: