17 miles TM, mostly marathon pace-ish (6:22 to 6:27, never slower, which averages to about 6:20 equivalent on a Phoenix-type course) with 2.5 miles of surges built in (6:00 to 6:07 pace). Most of the surges were quarter miles with one half mile at 6:00 mixed in for good measure. Overall, this was quite hard. My right pinky toe blistered up, which hurt, and my legs just didn't quite feel like they were at 100% (maybe Monday's workout was still slightly in them?). I wanted 18 and I expected it to be "hard", but I ended up doing 17 and it was "very hard" (the type of workout where I'm literally muttering not so nice stuff under my breath over the last couple miles, and I think more than 1 more mile would have annihilated me). I also only had a total of a .75 miles of surges after 13 or so (right at 13 for a quarter, another quarter at 15.5, then the last quarter) and each one of those felt crazy hard. I think I could handle as much as 20 like this on fresh legs, but I would guess that it would feel about as hard as running the marathon itself. I do think that 20 miles with 2.5-3 miles mixed in at 20-25s per mile under marathon pace should actually be nearly as hard as the marathon itself (someone correct me if I'm wrong on this), so the fact that I was close to that today probably shouldn't be discouraging. Overall, I felt pretty close to a train-wreck afterwards (light headache, slow-moving, and generally sore), but a good dinner cleared it up for the most part. I may do another one of these next week as it seems like I've pinpointed another type of run that can help my fitness dramatically. That said, I have 3.5 weeks until the race and I still feel really fresh (mostly due to laziness over the last month), so I'll probably work hard up until ~7 days out and just get in as much quality as I can before then. | 