Santa Susana Pass Road Revisited

We're back in California for a bit so I've been hitting some of my favorite training routes.  Santa Su is one I did while training for the Revel Canyon City Marathon.  It was my final long training run on November first.  It's eight miles that I think of as four segments - 2 miles up, 2 miles down, 2 miles back up, and 2 miles back down.

Saturday night I looked up my previous run to see what my best time was.  I thought it said 1:20:37, so just a little over 10 minutes a mile.  With that in mind I headed out yesterday morning.  It was a cool 42 degrees, clear and no wind.  I hit the halfway point in 40:36, 10:09 pace.  I knew if I was going to beat my previous best that I needed to be even faster!  So I took a GU and a selfie and headed back up...

Somewhere during mile five my legs started cramping.  I always take Hammer Endurolytes in Hawaii, but didn't think I would need them here in the cooler temps.  Wrong!  I took multiple walk breaks and saw my time get slower.  I ran those two miles in 25:59 and my total time at six miles was 1:06:36.  I knew I wasn't going to run my last two miles in 14 minutes, but I decided to see if I could at least PR the segment.  I ran those two miles in 15:47, overall time 1:22:35, 10:16 pace.  I got home and uploaded to Strava and saw this:

Turns out I had NOT run this in 1:20:37!  My previous best was 1:23:04. I was four seconds a mile faster, good enough for top woman on both 2 mile downhill segments and my second best 2 mile effort.

The lesson here - if you think you've been faster, you believe you can be faster!