23 Mile Long Run to Port Stanley -- Not pretty...

Today we did another Runners Choice Port Stanley run from London. I took off at the Saturn/Saab dealer at Wharncliffe and Southdale and fairly quickly caught up to Bernie, Clive, Mark and a bunch of others. We were banging off 8:30s pretty consistently, which is what I was targeting.

At the water stops, John Ferguson suggested that we plan for 3 minute stops. Instead, we started off with 2 minute breaks and eventually as things warmed up, I switched over to waiting until my heart rate monitor was saying it had come down to 110 beats per minute before I'd take off. At the start, that was certainly within 2 minutes, but as the day got warmer and sunnier (a high of 26 C or so, plus the sunshine), and I got more tired, it was taking longer and longer -- 5 or 6 minutes near the end, for sure.

Around the the turn-off at St. Thomas, Bernie and the others kept the pace and I drifted back. By the end, I was well back of my target finish at 11:40ish -- so I'd been out there for roughly 4 hours including breaks. My actual running time was 3:16:25 for 22.64 miles for an average pace of 8:41. So, within range while I was running of my target pace (8:30 to 8:45).

A couple of things I did differently, other than waiting for my heart to recover, was eating dried apricots when I needed food, combined with the occasional Clif Blok (triple-salt Margarita flavoured), plus the eLoad 5x eTabs (salt) pills. Also, because I was taking such a long break, my calves were seizing up on me when I would re-start -- but I focused on keeping them loose and after a minute or two I would be back up to speed.

Anyhow, here are my splits:

8:25
8:31
8:36
8:29
8:37
8:37
8:31
8:26
8:23
8:29
8:30
8:29
8:19
8:44
9:04
9:13
8:53
8:48
8:59
8:57
8:24 (0.59 of a mile for some reason)
9:03
8:54

My goal was to finish without ending up in an ambulance. Jeremy Groves and Jay ___ monitored me for the last 3 water stops to make sure I was okay, and Deb Ripley was keeping a close eye on me as well. Nice to have the support out there!