18 Miles - 3 times the Makawao Forest Run - Breaking the 3 hours frontier.

I was apprehending this one a bit, because last week was really tough. (more on this later). I knew by deciding on 3 full laps of this trail I was on for at least 3:30. Ended a little bit more than that. And any run that last more than a couple of hours still remains a little scary.

Forest Trail Run

After the first lap, I though "this is insane". I was on for only 1 hour and 10 minutes. This is a big hill to climb. I could not really imagine being able to go three time around this. Funny is that I crossed 3 times some people walking their dog. 3 hours is the average time it takes you to walk over there slowly. They should have think I was crazy. Running laps forever ;)

Welcome to my backyard

I had some people commenting that running that long is boring. Well, do you consider a forest walk in the afternoon like boring? It is quiet, resting and mind reinvigorating. Running that long becomes just an long trail walk. Following the advice of my training book, I dropped the music for the long runs. It helps to focus on the actual act of running, get you in the flow more easily and overall, transform this activity in a long meditation act.

Fall ... Slippery and leafy

It ended to be way easier that last week long run, even if I ran one hour more. The pacing was way slower, certainly around 12min/mile, which corrected for the elevation will give me certainly a 10min/mile on flat.

Hard to say as the GPS is not working very well because of the trees. (It eventually reported a **only** 14 miles run). But regarding my heart rate, it was an effort similar to a 10min/mile pacing.

Why does that matters ?

Just means that I feel way better running longer but slower than the opposite. Kind of make sense, but, well, until you experience it, you could still think that the sooner you get over it .....

Anyway, based on this assumption, I am revisiting my marathon pace from 9 to 10min/mile, at least on the start and a 4:30 finish goal time.

Which is **only** 50 more minutes to run that I did. 

Only.