A Personal Best 50k Time Trial

Training has been going well for the past seven months. In the midst of the pandemic and my first year raising twins, things really started to click back in September. At the time most races had been cancelled, so I started running all the Ithaca area trail race courses and popular trail routes at race effort. The consistent, quality mileage carried over through the winter in the form of tempo runs and steady state runs on rail trails and roads. With no Beast of Burden to train for this winter, I kept the mileage lower than I did in previous years—50 to 65 miles per week for most weeks. In a few weeks it was lower due to inclement weather, being homebound with sick kids, or both. But the consistency was there, and it paid off. 

Once race director Adam Engst began opening courses for the recently launched FLRC Challenge virtual race, I gained extra motivation to run hard on the race's road courses while waiting for the sloppy, snowy trails to dry out. Tempo intervals and fartlek runs on the Challenge's Pseudo Skunk half marathon course, marathon-pace efforts on the 10-mile Black Diamond Trail course, and so on, kept the fitness gains coming all the way into April. When our local trails finally thawed and dried enough to run

comfortably, I found myself knocking out off-road miles faster than ever at effort levels that I previously found strenuous but now felt like an easy jog. Harder trail efforts were consistently faster too. All of this leads into a personal challenge I'd been eying for months—taking a crack at a sub-4-hour 50k. 

Backing up a bit, I did run a pseudo 50k time trial on February 12. That run wasn't planned out too well and I didn't rest up for a peak performance. Rather, I had a Friday off from work while the kids were at daycare, and decided the night before to run a flat 50k on roads to beat my race PR for the distance. The time to beat was a paltry 4:41:28 (at the 2017 Mendon Trail Run), although I'd run the 50k distance a few times in 4:30-ish while training for the 2018 Beast of Burden Winter 50. 

For the February time trial, I simply ran loops and out-and-backs on Ithaca's paved Waterfront Trail until my watch read 31.00 miles. The crummy Upstate New York winter weather was a factor, with strong winds abetting or hindering my pace at any given moment, depending on which direction I was moving. Some of the path hadn't been cleared of ice and snow, making the route less than ideal, but another snowstorm was on the way so it was the last chance I'd have for at least a few weeks. I tried and failed to run a steady 8-minute pace for the whole run and ultimately finished in 4:16:43—a very solid long run, albeit not the performance I'd hoped for. 

After another two months of training, I felt my fitness was at the point where a sub-4 was realistic. I'm running the mountainous Hyner View Trail Challenge 50k on April 24; a flat time trial after that quad punishing race is out of the question. So on the drizzly morning of April 11 I went over to Cass Park for a triple run-through of the FLRC Challenge Black Diamond course, with an extra mile at the end to hit 31. 

I mulled over the choice of venues until the morning of the run. On paper, the Kansas-flat Waterfront Trail is a faster course. The Black Diamond has about 300 feet of gain on the 5-miles out, followed by the same 300-foot downhill on the return. The crushed gravel surface puts a damper on traction but is more forgiving on the lower body muscles. I decided on the Black Diamond to avoid the inevitable wind on the Waterfront, and to avoid large crowds while making physical distancing easier. On a clear day with few people outside, the Waterfront would be the way to go, but on this day, the Black Diamond was the obvious choice. And as a bonus I'd rack up mileage for the Challenge. 

Four hours for 50 kilometers means averaging 7:44 per mile. To control for the trail's low-grade incline I figured 7:50 pace on the out and 7:38 pace on the back would be easy enough. The first lap I went out a little too fast for 4 miles before slowing it down. I was surprised by a pack of pigs promenading around the trail at mile 3. Apparently a few were smart enough to squeeze through the wide opening of a wire fence next to the trail while others sniffed around inside the enclosure. I approached cautiously until the escapees waddled back through. Naturally, the next few miles leant themselves to an earworm titled "Who Let the Hogs Out". I picked up the pace accordingly for the downhill return and finished lap 1 on pace in 1:17:17.

Lap 2 was more of the same, minus the intrepid porcine encounter. The 1:18:24 lap meant I was still on pace, and I was feeling good about it. After a quick stop at my nearby car to swap water bottles, I was back at it for the third and final uphill. Only a mile out I was starting to slow a little. When I passed Rich Heffron and Adam Schoene cruising the downhill, I secretly hoped they'd offer to pace me for the final 10. 

Mile 24 is where every fiber of my being violently self-destructed. It only took a few minutes to slow to a jog, bogged down by physical and mental fatigue. I tried to push through it—first by dissociating myself from the physical discomfort, then by gagging down a Gu Cold Brew Coffee Roctane gel in order to reap the benefits of its 70 mg of caffeine. Nothing worked. As it struck me the sub-4 was out the window, I let out a loud, defeated groan from the darkest recess of my soul. After walking for a minute to regain composure, I began running steady but slowly—just fast enough to meet my "B goal" of 4:08 for a sub-8-minute average pace. 

Lap 3 on the Black Diamond took 1:24:32. When I hit the trailhead I had another 0.8 miles until my watch reached 31, so I hustled through a mini Waterfront loop and finished in 4:07:20. 

Overall I'm happy with this run. In retrospect, I don't think I could have done much to run it faster other than to choose a flatter course. I'm not at the level where I can pace evenly and run a slight negative split for long distances. It does reassure me that my gain in fitness over the past 6-7 months is real. I doubt I could have run so well last year, and maybe anytime before. Recovery from these longer runs has been phenomenal too. After one day off, I did an easy 8 miles at Hammond Hill, and the next day I felt completely normal—no residual fatigue or soreness. Best of all, I didn't train specifically for a run like this. The result was a byproduct of consistent, non-specific training as I gear up for Hyner, the Cayuga Trails 50, and beyond.

Maybe April 2021 is the month of the 50k time trial. The day after my run, my friend Jason Mintz threw down a blazing 3:22 on the canal path outside of Syracuse. The next day, former Olympian and 2018 Boston Marathon winner Des Linden ran 2:59:54 to knock more than seven minutes off the women's 50k world record.