Go slow to go fast.

After running 25 miles of the wasatch 100 on Friday in my old trusty New balance 101's I've concluded I'm done with those shoes.  The 3 pairs I had did their job for 1500 miles I put on them, and they were the best shoe I could find at the time, but its time to move on.  My feet were just not happy about me bailing on my altras.  After 320 miles of pure freedom and comfort to move about the cabin as they pleased, my feet rebelled a bit at the constriction that was imposed upon them when I put back on the 101's.  They were sore and Had a couple blisters on the left side.

6.5 miles slow and easy today.  Top of the glutes a bit sore from all the slow downhill running over the weekend. 

Great feeling workout today.  It was a pretty easy workout, which is odd, because I used to think that doing 20 X 400 meters would be a pretty tough workout.  Well, I guess it would be, just depending on the pace.  It was easy today because the workout just called for 5K (80-82 seconds) pace.  If I was doing mile pace (70 seconds) for 20 quarters I don't think I could have pulled that off and that would have been extremely difficult after the first 10.  As it was, I averaged 80-81 seconds per quarter and did 20 of them with about 60 seconds of jogging 200 meters between each.  The 60 seconds was plenty of recovery all the way to the end, which indicates I was hitting a sustainable pace for that workout.  

14 miles total - ~1:40  with 3.5 w/u and 3 c/d.

A lot of fast runners were out running around the track at Fairview today.  Kenyon Neumann and Jeremy Freed did their workout of 7 X 3, 2, 1 at the same time as me, then Tyler McCandless, Pat Rizzo and Matty Reed showed up with Brad Hudson to do their workout of 8-10 x 800.  Among a bunch of other people roaming around.  It tends to be more enjoyable to do track workouts when a crowd of fast folks are out busting out the repeats at the same time.  Another reason why being a runner in Boulder is pretty much the bee's knees.

easy run, marshall, down sobo creek, up past golf course and home on bear creek

9 miles -  1:09 

Today's workout called for a threshold run, 3 miles easy, 2 x 10 min @ half/10k pace w 2 min active recovery, 2.5 miles easy.

I felt great and well recovered during my warmup so I went forward with the workout.  I never know on a given day if I'm going to feel recovered enough for the next workout.  But Tuesday's workout was pretty mild, so I'm sure that made a difference this week.

 Paces for the 2 x 10 min intervals running up 1 mile, then down .65-.75 miles on marshall road were 6:02 & 5:43.  I felt a lot more solid on the second interval just from having warmed up on the first one.  2 X 10 minute intervals is hardly enough to get the juices flowing...it seemed like I should be doing 3 or 4 of those.  But actually I like that it was an easier workout, because I'd rather be more recovered for the really big indicator workouts and harder long runs.

I decided to bail on the Santa Barbara marathon and do my own marathon at Altitude in November instead.  So now I'm really looking forward to starting doing marathon pace workouts on my newly contrived 4 loop marathon course, starting with Saturday's long run.

Easy barefoot hour on the bike paths.

 Today for my long run I wanted to test-run my new marathon loop to see how I like it and test the mileage out.

The verdict was that I like it a lot.  Its a really fast and smooth loop with no stops anywhere.  And the loop runs through really nice flat trail sections in boulder and through some really cool neighborhood roads. Some of the course is rolling slightly with ups and downs under bridges and roads, which makes it nice for some variety.  But there are no significant hills to climb or descend on the loop. Its slightly downhill a couple of the miles, and slightly up a couple of the others, but it's so minor that I hardly noticed.

According to my GPS device though the loop is only 6.3-6.33 miles long.  Not the 6.55 that MapMyRun suggested.  That could be because I'm losing reception on the many tunnels, or because I'm running the tangents.  In any case, I need to slightly revise the loop or measure it better so that I know that I'm running a loop that covers the full 6.55 miles necessary to make four loops a marathon.

For the run I did a 4 mile warmup to the course.  1 easy lap around the course.  Then one moderate to steady lap around the course.  Meaning I wasn't going to try to hit marathon pace, just run it somewhere between easy and marathon pace. 

1st lap: 47:23 - easy pace - 7:31 avg

2nd lap: 41:24 - moderate to steady pace - 6:34 avg 

Splits for 6 miles of the second lap: 7:19, 6:37,6:22, 6:15, 6:19, 6:15

I was surprised at how easy the 6:15-6:20 pace felt as I was running the 2nd loop.  But after the run I could tell it was a decent effort as I was dripping and a bit stiff after I stopped for a bit.  The real tests are going to be the two different marathon pace runs I do when I test out 2 consecutive loops at pace one run, and then three, or close to three, on a different run.  If I can hold 16-18 miles at marathon pace 3-4 weeks out from my goal date, and then I taper, I believe I'll be able to do it.  Time will tell though.  I can predict that 3 loops at marathon pace is going to a challenging run.  The first loop will be straightforward enough, but after that, well, I guess we'll see.