I Have No Idea What Happened To My Long Run!

So Julie's brother Scott and his wife Wheng arrived Saturday around 12:10pm before I was able to get a short long run in that day. I asked Scott if he wanted to go running with me and he said, "Sure"! I did warn him that we are at 6900' elevation and to not be surprised if he was winded quickly...I don't think he believed me much. I was planning on running about 9 miles and told him we could go in small loops around our house and that I'd drop him off our house when he got tired and then I would finish my run, I never finished!

I decided that it'd be best to try and go with more downhills than up for Scott's sake, which turned out to tbe the best choice. We went about 1/2 mile before Scott verbally said that he was struggling more than he'd expected. I enouraged him saying we could go as slow as he needed and that if he needed to take a break it'd be fine. He continued to go for another 0.7 miles before he had to actually stop and take a small walking break. Ironically this was at our first uphill section of the run. We only walked for about 2 minutes and then started up again.

We got to an intersection where we could've turned for home and been there in a mile or go straight an go another 2 miles or so. Scott thought about it for a moment and chose the longer route.We made it another 0.8 miles before he needed another small walking break. After that we continued a slow and steady pace and made it a total of 4.2 miles. We did it in about 48 minutes, about 6 of which were walking, but not too bad for a lowlander! He was surprised how much running at altitude took out of him.

I walked him back to our house and made the mistake of talking and taking a small break. This lead to me not making it out to finish the rest of my run. Bad for training, but maybe good for my legs. They were feeling pretty worn down from the treadmill hill workout. So i've decided that I need to make sure and plan hard hill workouts for Wednesday and NOT Thursday. It takes about two days for my legs to get really sore from any hard workout. This will give me a better long run on Saturdays I think.