I was still feeling a little rundown and also lazy over the last few days. Bad air quality + lingering virus that won't seem to go away 100% + surprisingly cold weather = laziness I guess. Ran with Fritz, Kevin, Chad, and Adam for the first 10-ish (after starting a little late and having to run hard at the start to catch up as they had already taken off... hah..), and then Fritz and Kevin the rest of the way. I think Fritz said it was 19.8 or 19.9. My watch was at 2:16:xx (probably 40 something... had 2:17:0x, but forgot to stop my watch when we got caught at a light for 20 seconds). Felt good up until 17.5-ish when I started to bonk. It probably didn't help that my "breakfast" consisted of one gel and my nutrition during the run consisted of one more gel. I gradually got dropped by Fritz and Kevin, but caught back up, until I got dropped again a couple minutes later. At that point, I was just fighting to keep running, so I lost about a minute on them at the end. Felt terrible afterwards, but whatever, lesson learned (how many times do I have to learn my lesson about actually getting out of bed early enough to eat breakfast before I do a long run? Hahaha...). Bonking sucks, but I think it was more because of nutrition than fitness. Still, today was a reminder that I should not be lazy over the remainder of my marathon training. If I start to bonk at mile 18 when I'm doing 26.2 instead of 20, things will get a lot uglier. As for my logging option, this effort would convert to 2:09:30 or so on the Phoenix course at lower altitude, so in all fairness, it wasn't all that far off marathon effort (based on the last few weeks sucking, I'm thinking that 6:20s will be a good goal pace for the gentle course at Phoenix). | 