LAND OF LAKES

Spent part of my lunch break at the running store watching the end of the Boston Marathon coverage. I got there about 2 minutes before Robert Cheruiyot crossed the line. With the weather they had, it’ll be interesting to read some race reports.

We’ve had incredible weather here, 3 days in a row, no less. And it occurred during the weekend. It’s hard to beat that. I came “this close” to running that 20K I mentioned last week. The weather would have been perfect for racing; 40-45 sunny, calm.

However, my training partners assured me that they were up for the workout I had penciled in; 15 miles with 12 miles at 6:40 (marathon) pace. Somehow the workout morphed into 19 miles with 10 miles at MP. After a 2 mile warm-up, we ran a 6:56 mile and then from there the next 9 miles were between 6:32 and 6:45. A HUGE thanks to Kim (and her GPS) for helping push the pace during this workout.

During our cool-down we looped back to the group behind us. Somehow we got talked into running around Lake Calhoun. The talker-into’ers promised to run easy. Then once we got to Lake Calhoun, they proceeded to pull away from our 7:15 pace. Halfway around the lake, Kim and I realized our decision to follow probably wasn’t our wisest. Of course, by that time it was just as “easy” to continue on around the lake, rather than turn back.

To make matters worse, Kim and I got “lost” on the way back to our cars. We thought we were running around Lake of the Isles, but it turns out we were going around Cedar Lake. Damn, Land of 10,000 Lakes!!! So we were basically a mile less than where we thought we were. That’s not a big deal during most runs. However, when you’re only planning to run 15 miles and you’re already passed 17, it sucks.

I decided to wear my HRM in case I had to run this type of workout by myself in the future – even without mile markers, I’ll be able to have a little feedback regarding the effort I need to maintain. My HR was around 177 for most of the MP-effort. While that’s probably a little (less than 5 bpm) quick, I felt pretty comfortable.

Overall, it was a confidence boosting workout in the sense that I feel I could go out and run 6:40 pace very early in the marathon. So even though I would have loved to race 20K, I think I did the right thing.

Friday night I ended up running 6 miles. That means I had 70 miles for the week on 6 days (8 runs).

Quote of the day;

“Everyone is an athlete. The only difference is that some of us are training, and some are not.” – Dr. George Sheehan