Monday, May 07, 2012

QUICKER THAN NORMAL

Surprise! I’ve actually been feeling pretty good lately. Saturday was my longest run since Grandma’s Marathon last year, as I made it 18 miles. Without a spring marathon on the horizon, I’ve been keeping my long runs around 16 miles. In addition to bumping my mileage, it was one of my faster training runs that I can remember recently. After running the first 4 miles solo as a warm-up, I joined my normal Saturday group and proceeded to click of 7:30 miles. Best of all was that things felt really comfortable until that last 2 miles. I ended up taking Sunday off and closed out the week with 55 miles.


This morning I woke up with a stiff lower back and was wondering if I’d be able to run at all. After a sluggish first mile in 8:36 I started to feel really good again. I ran an out-and-back course and without even thinking about it, each of the first 6 miles was faster than the previous; 8:10, 8:03, 7:59, 7:54, 7:53. Again, this felt really comfortable, so I tried to pick it up a little bit more during each mile and finished with 7:48, 7:31, 7:28, 7:21.

It seems like a lot of other people with similar race times as me train a lot faster than I do, so these splits probably seem really slow. However, for me, they’re a lot quicker than “normal” so maybe things are turning around. Either that or I just ran too hard and now I’m screwed for this weekend’s half marathon.

Quote of the Day;

"The long run is the single most important ingredient to marathon success.” – Bob Glover
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2 comments:

  1. Willie5/08/2012 8:34 AM

    "It seems like a lot of other people with similar race times as me train a lot faster than I do, so these splits probably seem really slow." From experience this spring, I have a run once a week where my times are at least a minute slower than my normal training runs. The first time it happened it made me wonder what was wrong, but I stuck with the slow pace as that's all it would do. Turns out by the weekend I raced my best time in months. Sometimes your body needs recovery so don't fret it, but give it the extra time and you'll be back on pace by the race ; )

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  2. Chad5/09/2012 8:22 AM

    Willie, I agree it's best to just listen to your body. However, I often wonder why my body says 8:30 - 9:00 pace is fine, when I know that some of my training partners don't know what 8:00 pace feels like.

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