GREAT RUN

My mother-in-law needed a ride to the airport at 4:30 this morning. Most “normal” people would be like “WTF?” For me, I only needed to get up 30 minutes earlier than normal. Plus, it was a great opportunity to get in a longer run on a week day. My only goal for the day was to get in 2 hours. Given the way I felt yesterday I wasn’t going to even think about my pace. If I ran 9:00 pace, so be it. 2 hours is still 2 hours.

At the start of my run my legs were really heavy, but within 15 minutes I started to feel great. 3 miles later I decided to take a split for a mile just to see where I was at. It felt like I was moving pretty well, but I never really know – especially during a morning run. I wasn’t going to be surprised if my watch said 8:30. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by the 7:45 reading.

After an hour I turned around and was still feeling really good. I decided to take advantage of the feeling and push the pace a little. On the way back, I ran a 5 mile (Zeke “certified”) stretch in 38:10 or 7:38 pace. My breathing felt really relax and I had a nice quick turnover. Having bone-dry pavement really helped – along with absolute calm conditions and 32 degrees. I added on a bit at the end for 2:01, which I called 15 miles.

Two days ago I called myself a slow poke for running over 9:00 pace. Runs like that make me worry that all the easy running I’m doing really isn’t helping. You know, “Long slow distance makes long slow runners.” While I feel I’ve added in a few stronger aerobic days, I need a lot more – but not just yet. I’m going to continue building through next week and then take another cutback week. If I can build for another 3-week cycle after that, I think I’ll be ready to bump up the intensity. That will give me the last 4 weeks of the base phase to incorporate more up-tempo runs.

I keep forgetting to mention this, but congrats to Daniel and Jose (two of my teammates) for completing the Western Australia Ironman last month. Daniel finished 99th in 10:38 while Jose finished in 13:51 (not bad for not being able to run for the last 8 weeks due to a stress fracture). Maybe DGC can find strength, inspiration, solace, etc. in Jose’s results.