My 2014 Running Year in Review

My running year starts and ends with this: I didn't get to see my Dad this year. I didn't see my 14-year-old nephew Benjamin either. Didn't get to see them, won't ever see them again. But I know Dad would have loved to read about my year. His friends all told me that at his funeral: How much he used to talk about me and my running; that I had qualified for Boston; that I was going to run up Pikes Peak; that I had run a sub-18-minute 5k. So I'm writing this for my Dad.

The Bar-S-Stampede. 1987, I think. How about those cotton shirts?

Every time I run, especially if I'm running in a wild or remote place, I think about Dad. I'm not going to mention him again in this review, but it's not because I'm not thinking about him. I'm always thinking about him, most of all when I'm thinking about running.

My plan for the start of the year was to run my first ultramarathon, and I didn't want to run some wimpy 50k. I signed up for the Leatherwood 50-miler in March. Then I'd follow that up with the Pikes Peak Marathon in August. After that, I was either going to continue running ultras, or pick some new goal, depending on how much I liked (or didn't like) running ultras. I felt like I had thoroughly prepared myself for Leatherwood, running in all sorts of conditions: Snow, ice, slush, mud, you name it. What I hadn't prepared for was rain for 12 hours, deep mud on the uphills and the downhills, mud that forced me to slow to a tentative walk even on the descents. I dropped after 50k, which meant I DNFed. That was one tough race!

For Pikes Peak, even though it's technically not an ultramarathon, I continued training as if I was running an ultra. That's because the best-case scenario finish at Pikes would be barely under 6 hours. I ran hills, bleachers, and more hills. Then I ran the race, and I did actually finish it -- in 6:21. I had done great on the ascent, matching my most optimistic projections, but struggled on the technical downhill. Still, I had run a freaking marathon up a freaking 14,000-foot mountain. That was pretty incredible.

My experiences at Pikes Peak and (mostly) at Leatherwood had convinced me that I'm not really an ultrarunner. I decided to spend the next year working on speed in shorter races. I had gained about 10 pounds in ultra training, and started to work shedding those pounds. I wanted to run some of the bigger road races in the country in 2015: The Ukrops Monument Avenue 10k in Richmond in March, and the Bloomsday 12k in Spokane in May. To get a good seeding at Bloomsday, I needed to run a sub-18:40 5k, and I didn't have a time that fast this year. Since my PR is 17:49, I didn't think an 18:40 would be too hard, but as it turned out, it took me four tries to get it, including missing by just two seconds at the USA Masters 5k! Finally I got an 18:19 at the Balloonfest 5k, so I'm all set for a good Bloomsday race next year. I topped things off with PRs at the 8k and 10k splits of the 12k .US National Championship road race, where I ran side-by-side with Joan Benoit Samuelson for a half-mile near the finish before she dusted me with her 57-year-old Olympic-sized kick.

I haven't quite lost all the weight I want to; I'm down about 5 pounds and I think losing even another 10 pounds would directly translate to more speed. I've also had a nagging hamstring injury that's probably related to my four 5ks in a row trying to hit that qualifying time for Bloomsday. Still, I think my final running stats for the year are pretty impressive:

Total miles run: 2,713 (PR)
Total elevation gain: 167,000 feet
Total hours run: 399 (PR)
Average pace: 8:15/mile
PRs: 8k (30:54), 10k (38:49)

From a running perspective, not a bad year! Here's a little slideshow I made with photos from most of the events described above. Hope you enjoy it!


Dave's Running in 2014 from Dave Munger on Vimeo.

For next year I don't have a cumulative mileage goal because I'm going to be spending the last four months of the year in India and I'm not sure I'll always be able to run. But I do want to run a marathon in India; I'm going to make that happen. I'd also like to break my 10k PR at Ukrops. My stretch goal there would be to go sub-37:00. To make that happen I will need to spend January making sure my hamstring injury gets healed.

I guess that's about it for 2014. See you on the other side!

Never say never: My second beer mile

At the start of this year, on my 47th birthday, I ran my first-ever beer mile. I ran it in 9:54, and my conclusion was that "if there's room for improvement, it's in the beer-drinking portion of the event. I'm not currently planning on doing another beer mile, but if I did, I'd definitely need to work on my beer-chugging skills."

Less than a week ago, I got an email from some friends who were planning another one. I guess I forgot how hard that first one was, because before I knew it I had committed to the race, which happened last night on the same course as the first one.

Soon I was Googling "best beer for beer mile" and "beer mile strategy," and found this article by the former record-holder with some good tips. The main one was to pick a beer that I liked. After ruling out a couple favorites that were below the requisite 5% alcohol content, I settled on New Belgium's Fat Tire Amber Ale:

Boston Marathon Bottle Opener sold separately!

The bottle opener would prove to be a big key to my race! I also let the beer warm to about 55 degrees before running the race, again on Josh Harris's advice.

After a 2-mile warm-up, about 8 of us got our beer and walked in the darkness to the starting line on a greenway near town. My plan this time was to run a bit slower than last time, so I wouldn't be absolutely gasping for breath as I tried to chug my beers.

With little ceremony, the race started and I chugged beer #1, remembering to hold the bottle at a 45-degree angle and trying to let the beer just slide down my throat. While I hadn't actually practiced beer-chugging, I did read some online advice suggesting this was the optimal angle. I don't think I got it perfect (actually, I know I didn't because I didn't approach the sub-10-second chugs of the record-breakers), but I definitely did much better than last time: 19 seconds for my first beer versus 29 last year.

I was third out of the gate and stayed in third as I tried to moderate my pace. I completed the first lap (really just an out-and-back) in 1:41. Garmin consistently measured my laps as 0.27 miles (despite using the same Garmin to chart the course at exactly 0.25 miles earlier that day), so my pace was either 6:19 or 6:44 depending on which Garmin measurement you believe. Either way, it was a little slower than planned, but I hoped to make up for it by drinking my beers faster. I wasn't breathing especially hard, and managed to get Beer 2 down in just two gulps. Beer Split 2 was 33 seconds (compared to 54 seconds last year). I was definitely making up some serious time!

Each subsequent lap went about the same, with the beers getting progressively tougher to swallow. I moved from third to second place, but couldn't catch the lead runner, a young guy I had never met, with a deadly-fast chug and some excellent speed as well. He finished first in 8:03, while I crossed the line in 8:41, a massive PR by a minute and 14 seconds! The chart below compares my two beer-mile efforts:

As you can see, even though I ran 28 seconds faster in January, I drank each beer an average of 27 seconds faster this time around; that's why I was able to set a 1:14 PR this time around! By slowing down on the runs just a bit, I made a massive improvement on my overall time. The only time I went all-out was on the final lap. I think the reason my final quarter-mile was slower this year is that I hadn't had as long of a break between Run 3 and 4 as last year. Also, last year, I was close to another runner and so had the opportunity to pass him in the final lap. This time I was running alone and didn't have as much incentive to go fast.

I'm not sure there's as much room for improvement in the future without a lot of time spent chugging beers in practice. I'm not opposed to drinking, but I prefer to sip my beverages, so there may not be another Beer Mile PR in my future. On the other hand, I've learned never to say "never" when it comes to running, so who knows?

The Garmin plot of yesterday's beer mile is below:

"You had a bad day" -- My recap of the ACC Fan 5k

I used to watch American Idol every week (don't judge!), and whenever a contestant was eliminated during one memorable season, they had to watch a montage of their best moments on the show, played to the tune of Bad Day by Daniel Powter.

I had been steadily improving my race times this season, but finally, I had a Bad Day. It came at the ACC Fan 5k on Saturday. I had been hoping for a season's best time, something better than the 18:19 I ran at Balloonfest just over a month ago. That's a 5:53 pace, so a pretty tough time to beat. I planned to start out at a 5:45 pace, then slow to a 5:50 on hilly Mile 2, then try to maintain that pace for the flat finish.

One tricky section of a race for me has always been the start. I tend to jump out too fast at the beginning and pay for it at the finish. So, as in several other races, I lined up in the second row and tried to stay conservative and not look at my watch. Unfortunately, when I finally did look at my watch I saw that I was going too fast: A minute into the race, my pace was 5:20 per mile, 25 seconds faster than I wanted to be. I tried to ease back, but not too quickly -- I didn't want to find myself running a 6:00 pace either. By the end of the mile (by my watch) I had managed to get my pace down to 5:45, but I didn't pass the actual mile marker until 5:51. Now I needed to speed up.

Fortunately the first part of Mile 2 was downhill and I was able to get my pace down to about 5:40. In the back of my mind, however, I began to think this wasn't going to be fast enough. If each mile is 6 seconds longer than my Garmin reading, I should be banking more time than this. I should probably be hitting a 5:35 pace by my watch. But I could also tell that wasn't going to be sustainable, even on a downhill; I wasn't feeling strong enough to run any faster. What I didn't know is that this downhill wasn't going to last as long as I thought it would, because the elevation profile on the course website didn't quite match up to the real race:

Recorded (green) versus published (blue)

When I passed Mile Marker 1 I had already run about halfway down the hill. Then I was faced with a relatively steep 50-foot climb up to Mile Marker 2. About 10 seconds before I arrived there, my watch beeped with a 6:05 pace for the mile. I finally passed the marker as the timer showed 12:00, for an actual pace of 6:00 for the first two miles. I was 25 seconds slower than what I had been hoping for at this point. Worse, there was still a fair bit of climbing to do. While the elevation profile I'd seen showed the climb ending right at the mile marker, in fact there was at least another 30 feet of climbing left.

This defeated me, and I watched my pace decline to 6:50 for the mile. Really? 6:50? I was running this pace at the end of an 11-miler last weekend.  Somehow I willed myself to pick up the pace just a bit, in the name of respectability. In the end I salvaged a 6:21 for Mile 3 and limped across the finish line as the clock ticked 19:07. I walked to my car to change, then posted this race photo to Facebook:

Caption: "Dave is unhappy. Bad race today, 19:08"

Now, a 19:08 (or 19:07 officially) is a great time for a lot of people, but it's my slowest this season, and my slowest since the Bare Bones 5k in May of 2013, on a warm day when I still hadn't fully recovered from running the Boston Marathon. It's almost a minute slower than my best this season, only 6 weeks ago. So what went wrong?

I think the main thing that went wrong is that I forgot what it takes to run a really fast 5k. You have to be on the brink of exhaustion, the whole race long. I also think I probably need to do a little more work at a pace faster than race pace -- basically just throw some 200s and 400s into workouts here and there, to remind myself that I can run much faster than 5:45, so that 5:45 doesn't seem like a stretch. Finally I probably needed to do a little more research on the course if I really wanted to run it fast. I usually like to run the whole course before a race, but I got a bit of a late start and didn't have time to do that. Fortunately my next race will be on a very familiar home course: The Tightwad 5k, a free race put on by my running group on New Year's Day. Assuming I'm not out partying the night before (I'm not planning on it), I should be able to do considerably better there than I did this past weekend. I don't like having bad days, so I'm going to do everything I can to avoid another one.

Details of Saturday's race are below:

Race Strategy: The ACC Fan 5k

On Saturday I'm taking on another 5k, this one a fairly big local race, the ACC Fan 5k, part of the festivities for the ACC Championship football game in Charlotte (the race used to be called the Championship Chase). My goal is to beat my season's best time of 18:19, set just over a month ago at the Balloonfest 5k. That would require a pace of better than 5:53, so the plan is to set myself up to run a 5:45 pace if I'm feeling good, or maybe a 5:50 if things aren't going quite so well.

The race doesn't set up quite ideally for me, but it's not too bad either. Here's the course map and elevation profile:

Ignore the little dips near the start and finish of the race; they are artifacts of the overpass where Tryon crosses the freeway (this is because the map measures the ground elevation, not the elevation of the bridge). The actual course proceeds smoothly over those dips. This means the first mile is flat, Mile 2 has a long downhill and a short 70-foot climb, and the finish is flat.

I'd prefer to have that climb before the downhill, but I have to run the race I'm given, so here's the strategy. I'll start out at a 5:45 pace for Mile 1, then try to ride the downhill and pick up the pace just a touch, maybe to 5:40. Then I'll give some of that time back on the climb; how much will depend on how I'm feeling. If I'm crushing it, my average pace for the mile will be right at 5:45. If not, hopefully I won't slow below 5:50. Then I'll try to hold whatever pace I had for Mile 2 all the way to the end. If I slow to 5:55, I'll still have a season's best, but if I keep it at 5:45 the whole way, I just might break 18:00. My 17:49 PR is probably not in play for this race; that would require a pace of 5:43, which I doubt I can hit right now.

This morning I tried to do about 1.4 miles of my run at 5k pace and didn't quite make it: I was closer to a 6:10 pace. But yesterday I ran a fairly hard 10-miler, and my route today was hillier than the race route, so I think with a couple days of easy running, I will have a better shot at that 5:45-5:50 pace. Wish me luck! The details on today's workout are below.

Race Recap: The .US National 12k

I had been worrying about whether to wear gloves.

I decided not to, and felt fairly confident that was the right decision. It was about 39 degrees, and I'd just finished my strides and was lining up about 8 rows back at the start of the .US National 12k. The crowd helped keep me warm as I waited for the starting gun.

It's always neat to run in high-profile races like this one. I knew Molly Huddle was already out on the course, and just ahead of me were some male elites I'd read about in Runner's World: Aaron Braun, Trevor Dunbar. Then over the loudspeaker I heard "Please welcome Olympic Gold Medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson to the start!"

Joan Benoit Samuelson, I thought. The Joan Benoit Samuelson, who I watched win the gold medal by a mile in 1984? And there she was, lined up about two rows ahead of me. I later learned she was 57 years old, but she hardly looked different from the TV image that's still engraved in my brain, 30 years after I saw her win. There she was, in person, wearing a bright yellow cap. Maybe I'd see her during the race!

Before I had time to process that thought any further, we were off. My plan was to line up far enough back to avoid starting too fast, and I could soon tell that a fast start was not going to be a problem. The start line was fairly narrow, and I actually had to walk for a few seconds before finally hitting my stride as I crossed the line and started my watch. The plan was simple: Start at a 6:10 pace, and see how long I could keep it up. If I managed that all the way to the finish, I'd finish in 46:00, and I should get a 10k PR along the way. No matter what, I was guaranteed a 12k PR: I'd never raced this distance!

I knew the race was essentially flat, but I had spotted a small hill during warm-ups, just under a mile from the start. Soon we had turned the corner and started up the hill. At the top, I checked my watch: 6:11, right on target. I crossed the timing pad at Mile 1 as my watch read 6:11 and the official clock ticked 6:20; it had taken me 9 seconds to cross the start line.

About a mile and a quarter in I saw Joan Benoit Samuelson's bright yellow hat ahead of me. In a moment, I was past her, but I could see that she was still a strong runner, wearing an F55 bib on her back to indicate she was in the 55-59 age group. I doubted there was any woman in her age group ahead of her.

Now the runners were beginning to stretch out. There was still a group around me, a few guys and one woman in the 40-45 age group. I was keeping a solid 6:07-6:08 on my Garmin. I figured I should hit the Mile 2 marker any moment. Then I noticed that I was already 7 minutes in to the "mile." Had I missed the marker? There was no way to know until we reached Mile 3.

Before we got there, we saw the elite women headed home. It was an out-and-back course, 7.46 miles total, so about 3.72 to the turnaround. One woman was well ahead of the pack -- was that Molly Huddle? No time to know for sure. Finally I reached the 3-mile marker, and with relief hit "lap" on my watch. A 6:10 pace for Miles 2 and 3. Right on target!

The turnaround was tight -- no room to maneuver at all, just a cone to run around. I tried to accelerate quickly out of the turn and not lose too much speed. Mile 4 was over before I knew it, another 6:11. A moment later I checked my watch and saw that I was running a 5:37 pace. Too fast! I slowed down a bit, but tried not to slow down too quickly. The group of men I was with began to pull away. I let my pace decline to 6:00, figuring I might as well cash in on a quick mile. But then when I arrived at Mile Marker 5, I saw that it was all an illusion. I had run the mile in 6:10, the same as the others; it was just the Garmin itself that was wrong (as they often are on 180-degree turns).

I was deflated. I had been hoping to pick up the pace, and now I had nearly two and a half long, lonely miles ahead. Suddenly what had seemed easy was beginning to feel laborious. I finished Mile 6 in 6:26. Ugh.

But now there was less than a mile and a half left. Surely I could pick things up a bit for the last little bit. Slowly, slowly, I edged my GPS pace back to 6:10 per mile. I made it over the little hill and knew I had less than a mile left. I was on the final straightaway, and I could see the finish line! I could see the tiny, infinitesimal finish line, interminably far away. How could I ever hope to keep this pace up?

I felt someone pass me on the right. She was by me in a flash. It was...Joan Samuelson! Holy crap, Joan Samuelson just passed me! Maybe I could stay with her. Maybe I could cross the finish line with Joan Samuelson! How cool would that be? I picked up the pace, and soon I was running side by side with Joan Samuelson. Would it be rude to tell her she was one of my running heroes? Would it be possible? I was gasping for each breath; I'm not sure I could have said a word.

For half a mile, I ran side by side with Joan Samuelson, who got stronger with every step, as I got weaker. People cheered her on as we ran by, "Go Joan! Go Joanie!" Finally, right around the 7-mile marker, I had to let her go. She pulled away smoothly, easily, as the growing crowd urged her forward. I saw my wife Greta and our friend Pat cheering me on. I was thinking "Did you see Joan Benoit Samuelson?"

Greta actually got a photo of me and Samuelson:

Yep, that's me, trying not to look too bad as Samuelson crushes me!

And she got another one of me on my own:

Not too shabby...

Here's an official shot of me crossing the finish line:

You can see Samuelson, in her yellow cap, at left. At least try to look tired, Joan!

My official time was 46:32, for an average pace of 6:15 per mile. By my watch, I had 46:26, or a 6:14 pace, but apparently the timing system missed my start, so I was awarded a gun time only, no chip time. Either way, it was a PR. Along the way, I also PRed in the 10k (38:49) and 8k (30:54). Not bad for a day's work!

I was a little disappointed that I couldn't stay with Samuelson all the way to the end, and that I hadn't quite held my 6:10 pace. But I'm glad that I managed to pick things up after my disappointment at Mile 5. I'm really glad I got to race with a living legend, even though she beat me in the end, at ten years older than me! She was the third-place Master's runner, and the first female finisher over age 43. Oh yeah, she has definitely still got it!

I shook Samuelson's hand and congratulated her on her race, and then she was whisked away to be interviewed over the PA system, while I wandered around looking for Gatorade, and my friends.

"Did you see Joan Samuelson?" I asked them, excitedly.

"Was she the winner?" Greta asked.

Oh, she was. She most definitely was. And I was honored to be running, ever so briefly, alongside.

Some thoughts about the .US National 12k

On Sunday I will be running my first-ever 12k. Guaranteed PR!

It's the .US National 12k, the final race in USATF's USARC pro series. It is going to have some serious star-power, including last year's winners, Aaron Braun and Molly Huddle. I, naturally, will be far behind these elite athletes, and based on last years results would be extremely lucky to break into the top five in my age group.

The course looks to be a little different from last year's inaugural event; it's an out-and-back along the first half of the course. I like out-and-back courses, so that's good. It should also be a very flat race, so that's good as well.

So how fast should I run it? Well, if you take my current season's best 5k, 18:19, and plug it into the McMillan Running Calculator, you get a projected time of 46:15 and a pace of 6:12. That's not a very round number, though. How about a 6:10 pace for 46:00? Is that doable? It'd be a stretch. Last Sunday I did an 8-mile tempo run, albeit on a hilly course, and a 7:00 pace felt pretty tough. 12k is 7.46 miles, so not much shorter.

But I'd like to at least start out at that 6:10 pace and see how long I can hang on. If I'm feeling good at the halfway point I can pick it up a bit for a negative split, or I might end up slowing down a tad but hopefully finishing in a respectable 46:30 or so. If I could do that, then I should also have a 10k PR -- assuming the timing is the same as last year, this race will give the runners splits at 1 mile, 5k, and 10k. A 46:30 is a 6:14 pace, which works out to a 38:45 PR in the 10k.

Tomorrow I'm going to be doing a little track work, so I'll try to hit race pace for that and I should have a better idea how it feels on level ground.

The weather on race day is currently forecast to be around 35 degrees at start time, which might seem a little cold but that's actually warmer than the temp where I got my 5k PR, so that should be just fine. But of course it's still a bit far from the race date to accurately predict the weather.

Overall I'm feeling pretty good, my hamstring which had been bothering me is settling down, and everything points to a good race. Wish me luck!

Reverse-engineering Strava's Grade-Adjusted Pace

Love it or hate it, Strava has some pretty cool features. The basic premise of the site is that it allows you to compare your performance on a particular running (or cycling) route or section of a route. Does your running group do the same loop every day? You can set up a leaderboard for that loop (it's called a "Segment" on Strava), and compare your performance on any given day with your best ever — and the best by any other Strava user. You don't even have to start or stop your timer at the start of the segment; just load your entire GPS record onto the Strava website and it will find any segments you crossed during your run.

Some people don't like Strava because it tends to foster competitiveness instead of just inspiring people to go out and have fun. But even if you opt out of Strava's competitive features (which is simple to do by making your profile private), it has some other nifty features that I find very useful. One of them is the Grade-Adjusted Pace (GAP).

The basic idea is simple: It doesn't take as much effort run an 8:00 mile on a flat road as it takes to run that same 8:00 mile going uphill. Similarly, an 8:00 mile is easier to run on a downhill slope (assuming the slope isn't too steep or technical).

Take today, for instance. I was doing a 2-mile tempo run as a part of a longer workout. Here's an elevation profile of the run:

I've color-coded the relevant sections

The two-mile tempo is around the 4-mile mark (in green and blue). I ran the first (green) mile in 6:04 and the second (blue) mile in 6:26, but the blue mile seemed WAY harder to me. Of course this was because the green mile was mostly downhill and the blue mile was mostly uphill. But I slowed down on the uphill — did the uphill seem harder just because I was tired from the first mile, or was I honestly working harder for that mile, despite the fact that I was going slower?

Strava has an answer for me: In that first (green) mile, I descended 112 feet. Of course that felt easier! How much easier? Strava's GAP for the mile was 6:27 — slower than my actual pace in the blue mile. In the blue mile, I climbed 85 feet, for a GAP of 5:56 a mile. So even though I ran slower in the blue mile, it actually felt like I was running faster!

But during the same workout I ran two other miles at tempo pace (in gray and red on the profile). The final (red) mile felt even harder to me than the blue mile. What does Strava say about that? Strava disagrees. My actual pace for the mile was 6:20, but my GAP was only 6:03 — slower than my GAP for the blue mile.

Looking at the elevation numbers from my workout, you can make a case that red mile was tougher: There was a total of 115 feet of climbing, versus just 85 feet in blue mile. Given that my actual pace was faster in that mile, why was my GAP slower?

In red mile, there were also some significant descents: 92 feet in all. Blue mile had 7 feet of descent. So on the net, blue mile climbed 78 feet versus just 23 feet in red mile.

But surely it's harder to run a mile with 100 feet of climbing and 100 feet of descending than a flat mile, isn't it? So similarly, wouldn't it be harder to run a mile with 115 feet of climbing and 92 feet of descending than a mile with a steady 23-foot climb?

Strava has actually made an effort to account for this problem, studying relevant research and posting some information on their engineering blog:

Our original GAP implementation was inspired by the research of C.T.M. Davies [1, 2] studying environmental effects on running. Our approach used a scaling factor that adjusted pace as a function of grade, with the adjustment getting larger with increasing steepness for both uphill and downhill terrain.

 That makes sense, but what they don't tell us is whether the factor is the same for uphill and downhill. It seems to me that the factor should be less for the downhill cycle. But there is a further problem, which Strava's engineers have also noted:

Additionally, GAP is only an estimate of the energy cost of running. It does not account for terrain surface or the technical skill involved in downhill running. It is extremely difficult to make aerobic fitness the limiting factor when running downhill, particularly on trail at steeper grades. Technical skill and motor control are almost always the limiting factor. For a constant-effort run on hilly trail, we generally see downhill GAP trending to the slow side due to these factors.

I've experienced the problem of "making aerobic fitness the limiting factor" firsthand at the Pikes Peak Marathon. There is simply no way I could have run the downhill portion of race at a the maximum pace I was capable of aerobically. The 15 percent downhill would have necessitated a pace in the 6-minute range, at which speed I would have tripped on the rocky terrain a hundred times a mile. I would have been reduced to a quivering mass of gristle in half a click!

Even on my run this morning, with a much more manageable 7- to 10-percent grade on paved roads, I had to consciously slow down in the darkness as my pace approached 5:30 per mile! At that grade, Strava was calculating my GAP at 7:19 per mile, so in order to put out a 6:00 effort, I would have had to run nearly a 4-minute pace. There's not much chance of me doing that safely on a dark night running with a dim headlamp.

On the uphill sections, by contrast, I was running about a 6:40 pace and putting out a sub-5:30 effort. No wonder it felt so hard! In the end, on a course with significant downhills, it's always going to be a technical problem putting out an equal aerobic effort there compared to the uphills. So while technically it might be true that I put out less total effort in the red mile, during the uphills, I really was putting out more effort than at any other point in the run, and there's no way I could have run the downhills fast enough to equal that effort.

Here's the link to my Strava record of the run.

Here's the Garmin record (which gives numbers for both the ascents and descents)