In the 1st 7/10th of a mile I ran from an elevation of 10,298 feet to 10,855 & was seeing bright flashes of light in my vision & was a little dizzy, which was caused by running at such a high altitude at a semi fast pace. At the 2.5 mile mark I descended to 10,421 feet & the spots went away, not to return again the rest of the run. By the 4.4 mile mark of the run I ran to an altitude of 11,013 feet. By this point I was already becoming fatigued. I was surprised at how quickly I became tired, I never get tired at the 4.5 mile mark of a run, even when running at a time trial pace! By the time I finished the 9 mile run I was unable to run longer than 10 minutes without walking a while to recover. I was truly exhausted!
Today, 2.5 days later I'm still sore. Really sore. The altitude & terrain may have been a small portion of the reason I became so taxed, but the majority of the reason was my body isn't used to doing that kind of training. It's called sports specific training. I'm not used to it, so my body isn't very good at it. Which got me to thinking about my triathlon racing, I've made great gains on my bike, & even pretty good gains on my swim while virtually not swimming all year, yet almost no gains on my running.
In December I started running intervals, & that increased my average pace by almost 15 seconds per mile, but considering I've lost 40 pounds since the fall, 15 seconds per mile on the run is pretty pathetic. It wasn't until I did the trail run on Friday that I realized why my running hasn't improved much. The answer is I'm not doing sports specific training! I train on a dirt trail, & then try & race on concrete or asphalt! That would be as dumb as training all the time on a mountain bike then racing on a triathlon bike, or training on nothing but hills then racing on a flat course! Duh! I've been training for triathlons hard core for almost 7 years & have all sorts of knowledge about triathlon, how could I have not realized something as elementary as training predominantly on the surface I race on?
Today I was scheduled for a 7 mile run, & rather than run it on my normal dirt trail I ran along highway 14. Since I was running on asphalt I ran the 7 miles much faster than I normally would running of on dirt, which was sweet! Makes sense to me, run faster to be able to run in a race faster! I also became tired sooner than I normally would of, & I was much more fatigued at the end than I normally would be on a dirt run. I believe this revelation & change in training tactics will result in a big speed & endurance increase during my racing.
I'll let you know how the road running goes & if it effects my performance as much as I think it will. Thanks for tuning in!
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