32km (20 miles)

Today and the next 2 Saturdays are 32km (20 miles). This is the heart of my 40K training and I'm trying hard to do a good job. The weather was thankfully very cooperative! It was 66F when I started (with 46% humidity) and it felt SO nice and cool. It did get hot the last 8km or so, but it only went up to 75F with 40% humidity, which is a lot better than it has been at 9 am! I just can't say enough about how much cooler I felt today. I drank a lot less, and that was fine - I still stayed hydrated and all was well.

I felt good today, and that was a relief. No GI problems, my legs felt good, and it was an interesting day. I decided to do four 8km loops around Liberty Park and down 600E. On the second loop I noticed that Salt Lake Running Company was setting up a 5K race on 600E! I thought, "Wow, this could be fun!". I was racewalking back down toward the race start right as they were about to start! I had to go by on the sidewalk as I was still going south and the race was going north. I reached my turn-around and ended up walking past the start after they'd been going for 2 min 30 sec or so. I had a LOT of fun picking off all the walkers and the slower runners and by their turn-around at 2.5km I was almost with the middle-of-the-pack runners. Fun! It gave me more energy for that 3rd 8km for sure.

I did pay for that a bit in the last 8km, especially since it was hotter. What was particularly funny was that after I went around Liberty Park (2.25 km), filled H2O bottles at the fountain, paused briefly to eat some Clif Shot Blocks, and headed back down 600E toward the 5K turnaround (another 0.5-1km?), I was not far behind the last walkers in the race. I actually caught a bunch of them before the finish line, and the race photographer took my photo, hahaha! I told him I wasn't in the race but he said that was OK :). It was great entertainment and then after I turned around I only had 4km left to walk alone. I wish they had a race like that every week!

Splits: 8km - 49:19, 50:11, 49:03, 50:02 (hmmm, yes, that 5K race was definitely in the 3rd 8km!). 5km - 30:23, 31:33, 31:25, 30:50, 30:28, 31:27, and last 2km 12:31.

Total time: 3:18:36 for 6:12/km (9:59/mile) and my ave HR was a black box...I think my HR monitor is dead. It was reading about 150 when it was reading, so I'd guess 150ish? I was working moderately hard for a distance day, but I was fast :) so I was happy with that.

Garmin data here.