Its been a wild week so far with so many things to write about, I just know I won’t have enough time to write about it all right now. I completed 71 miles this week, mostly speed runs (a mix of GA, vo2’s, half marathon pace and marathon pace), but surprisingly today was the best run of them all. My training run today was a long run of 20 miles, with 14 miles being at my marathon pace .. I’ve struggled a bit with long runs (primarily due to the heat), but hit this one out of the park by running it exactly at pace.
The reason I hit it out of the park is that the last few Saturdays have been so warm that my long runs have been a struggle, and I was running then 10-15% slower than my marathon pace. I figured I wouldn’t be able to keep the pace today, but found that I ran better by running at pace then by running it slow. I have to admit I was terribly tired at the end, but I did it and actually wanted to keep going, but remembered that I do need to stick to the training.
On my travels today I passed a lady who appeared to be training for a race of some length (either a half or full marathon) and wasn’t doing so well. I saw her in the distance stretching up against a tree, bright red and looking like she hit the wall but I managed to give her a little encouragement that she appreciated. I just told her to hang in there, you’re looking good, and she got on her way .. she knew I was training for something since I had my normal gear (yep, I looked like I marathon runner today).
The only bad part of my run today though was that my Garmin watch didn’t make the trip today. It froze up on me last night when I was trying to update my workout, and I had to let the battery go dead in order to get it back, but it didn’t die fast enough. I got through by mentally marking the important milestones on my run and just using my old watch .. regardless, it turned out good. It was strange not running with my Garmin, I did miss it.
I got my new shoes today as well, its getting harder and harder to find the Mizuno’s that I like since they are the last model .. but I can still find them out there on the web (sometimes at a pretty low price). I’ll have to upgrade to the latest model sometime in the future, but not until I have to.
The last thing I have to say today is that I took some time to start analyzing the Rochester marathon course and found out that over 12 miles of it is a trail run. I wasn’t expecting another trail course this fall, especially one in a bigger city marathon (or maybe Rochester isn’t really a bigger city????) This means I’ll have to get my trail run legs on in the next few weeks ..
Maybe I’ll update during the week, i’m just so busy these days (and tired from training). I find myself getting up at 4:30-5am each morning to get in 10 or 12 or 15 miles, whatever the day has to offer, then I have to goto work and by the time I get home and eat, i’m ready for bed. Well, it’ll all be worth it this fall, i’m feeling good so far, I hope it keeps up.