This weekend I went on a group long run on trails (the route was a little bit affected by the rain and with lot of leaves). Here are the activity details:
Distance: 25km
Elevation gain: 340m (most of this gained on 4 short and steep climbs)
Moving time: 2h:19m (aroung 5:30min/km pace)
Total time: 2h: 50m
I completed the route with two other guys, however after the run I started to wonder if this can be considered a workout since it went like this:
The running scene is not too develop in my town so this is the only option for a group run for me. Are there any training gains of those kind of runs?
Distance: 25km
Elevation gain: 340m (most of this gained on 4 short and steep climbs)
Moving time: 2h:19m (aroung 5:30min/km pace)
Total time: 2h: 50m
I completed the route with two other guys, however after the run I started to wonder if this can be considered a workout since it went like this:
- One of the guys from the start went to an tempo pace (equivalent of an easy-medium pace for me) and urged us to follow him. He was doing this with almost no warmup since a few static exercises I think cannot be counted as a proper warmup. We didn't follow the pace "advice" so the first 2km were done at an easy pace.
- After 2km we hit the first climb (almost 1km with 8-9% gradient) of the day. Of course the "tempo guy" was setting the pace from the begging of the climb. I was just behind him, keeping a steady rhythm without any breathing difficulty. However he was breathing heavily and I was hearing his breath really well. As I was expecting, near the half of the climb he started to succumb. I just passed him by keeping my rhythm and reached the top of the climb first and I had to stop. They really needed a brek on top of the climb so if I didn't stopped then the gap will increase and the run would had turned into a solo run fro me. This story repeated on all climbs of the day.
- After the break and some easy run the "tempo guy" started again to increase the pace and again was looking behind to urge us to follow him. This didn't happened and it just stopped to wait for us but for me this looked more like a needed break for him. This story happened after all climbs except the last climb of the day.
- As a general mention the the "tempo guy" didn't carried any water with him or something to eat. He was just saying that for this distance he doesn't need any water.
- After the last climb I was getting annoyed by the "tempo guy" so I decide to increase the pace in order to prevent his surge. Basically km 19 and 20 were the fastest flat km of the run and I kept the pace in a way that I heard their steps behind since I didn't had any intention to split the group. After those 2km the "tempo guy" was just screaming to stop since he needs a break.
- From this point to the finish we went to an easy pace however the "tempo guy" constantly remained behind and switched to walking (even on downhill) sine he was done.
- I didn't counted all the breaks but there were at least 10 breaks during the 25km of the course.
The running scene is not too develop in my town so this is the only option for a group run for me. Are there any training gains of those kind of runs?