Marathon pace run (16 miles total w/ 8 miles at goal marathon pace). 7:36 am, 32-44°F, 31-15% humidity, wind calm until the last 2 miles, then 3 NE. I met Carly and my friend Michelle and my other friend Michelle at the Highline Canal Trail today. Carly wanted to do 9 miles and so the Michelles agreed to do that amount too. I ran with them, but then when we finished 8th mile I sped up and left them so that I could do my marathon pace portion. I really wasn't sure what pace to run for my marathon pace portion. On the training plan it says "marathon race pace" but in the book that the training plan comes from, it says that you should do these at your goal marathon pace. Well, I'm not really sure what my goal marathon pace should be. I ran the Ogden marathon at an average pace of 8:36. If I put my most recent race time (which is a 5K) into the McMillan calculator, it gives me a marathon pace of 8:30. But my goal (which might be a little optimistic at this point) is to run a 3:30 marathon, which is 8:01 pace. So I just tried to run between 8:01 and 8:30 for the marathon portion, the closer to 8:01 that I could, the better. The first 9 miles were 4.5 out and back on the trail heading north from the rec center. There were a few snowy sections on the trail, one relatively large one, through this part. My next 5 miles were 2.5 out and back on the trail heading south from the rec center. It was considerably snowier than the northern part of the trail. Almost all of it was snow covered, which was kind of a pain. Incidentally, during this portion, I literally ran into a dog. It was a small dog and it's owner was right there, but the dog was off leash and it ran right at me. It wasn't threatening at all. I wasn't worried that it would bite me. It just seemed excited to see me and ran right into my leg. I just kept running. I felt the impact, but I assume the dog was okay. If the owner wasn't happy about it, then too bad. That's what he gets for letting his dog off leash on the trail. When I got back to the rec center after my little adventure on the southern part of the trail, I still had 2 miles to go, so I went north to the 1 mile marker and then turned around and came back to the rec center. I really had to use that mile marker because a little past the rec center (after 14.4 miles to be exact), my Garmin died. I had gotten a low battery warning when I turned it on this morning, but there was nothing I could do except how that it would make it through the run. So when I got to the end of my run, I just checked the time on my cell phone so that I could use that to figure my time for those last two miles. It's not terrifically precise, because my cell phone shows the time to the minute, not the seconds. Also, there's also no 0 mile marker at the rec center, so I just had to kind of guess where to stop. So those are the caveats to my pace calculations for the last 2 miles. Nevertheless, I did push it on those last 2 miles and I felt like I was going to throw up when I finished. AP: 9:04. Splits: 9:52, 9:50, 9:50, 9:46, 9:56, 9:52, 10:03, 9:59, 8:14, 8:06, 8:13, 8:17, 8:19, 8:21, 2 miles @ 8:07 (but maybe not - This is based off a finish time of 10:01:22 am, but the 22 seconds was just a guess. The phone just said 10:01. I could have been as much as 38 second slower, which would make my average pace for those last two miles 8:23. The truth probably lies somewhere in between). In any case, if I go with the arbitrary guess of 22 seconds past 10:01, my average pace for the marathon-pace portion was 8:13. I think that in the future when I have a marathon pace run on Saturday, I should take it a little easier on Thursday than I did this week.
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