Objective: Progression Run - 10 miles, last 6 moderate.
Result: Progression Run - 10.53 miles, last 6.53 moderate (bordering on hard). Average pace: 9:39.
Weather at 6 am: 35°F, 23% humidity, wind 6 mph SSE.
I started out slowly and kept it pretty slow for the first four miles, but then I sped up fairly significantly once I hit the speed-up point. Splits were: 10:59, 10:39, 10:56, 10:31, 9:32, 9:12, 8:44, 8:51, 8:54, 8:51.
I ended up going a little farther than I had intended. I took my standard 10-mile route that I've done a lot lately, but I don't like the last part of it, so I changed it up and went home a different way. I was afraid the different way wouldn't be long enough, so I added in a loop. It turns out the loop was a little too big. I wanted to end close to but not under 10 miles. Oh well.
I'm trying to figure out how to approach my Saturday run this week. The description of it is "Hard Long Run - 1 mile easy, 10 miles @ marathon pace + 10-20 sec./mile, 1 mile easy." The thing is that my marathon pace, according to McMillan and my most recent race, which was a 5K on Thanksgiving Day, my marathon pace is 9:58. If I had 10-20 seconds to that, then I'm at easy run pace. I've been running a lot faster than that on the moderate part of my progression runs (see today's splits). However, on Saturday I've got to go 10 miles at whatever pace I decide, with only one mile of warmup before. My progression runs have been no longer than 6 miles with at least 2 miles of warmup before. So I'm not sure what pace to target for this run on Saturday. I'm thinking maybe around 9:30-9:40. It is supposed to be a hard long run. I guess I'll just have to see how I feel. | 