I ran 20 miles this morning in 1:59:54. This is the fastest that I have ran a 20 mile run in a long time, and I am happy that I finished feeling like I still had more in the tank. To top it off it was windy as always, with the wind definitely affecting me over the course of the run (although the wind was stronger last Saturday). I would have finished this run a fair amount faster if it weren't for the wind. For today's workout the plan was to run 9.5 miles easy, followed by a 9.5 mile tempo, followed by a 1 mile cool-down to finish at my house. I started off faster than I normally do, as there was somewhere we needed to be later on in the morning and I wanted to give myself a few more minutes after getting home to get ready. I made it through 4 miles in about 27:30 after an uphill first mile in 7:22 (big uphill, that is why I never run hard the last mile of workouts... I don't want to run down it). I then averaged about 6:35 or so on two loops of sunset park of 2.7 miles each (18:09 and 17:25). I then ran an extra 40 seconds to get to 9.5 miles in 1:03:44 before the start of my tempo run. I started my tempo, and I did the little loop of the park (1.1 miles) in 6:09 (5:35 pace). I didn't push too hard on this loop, as I was just trying to get a feel for the wind, but I started increasing the effort at the end of this loop when I started the first of two big loops of the park. Recently in trying to assess where I need to make improvements I have come to the conclusion that my quad strength is lacking, or at least my ability to utilize this strength while running hard is lacking. I notice this the most when I am running in adverse conditions (i.e. against the wind or uphill) and as such I decided that when pushing against the wind I needed to try and better utilize my quads as power generators. So, my tempo run today ended up feeling like I was running lots of surges, as I was pushing harder against the wind, and then just trying to maintain speed when the wind was more favorable. I was not sure what to expect time wise after the first big loop of the park, but I was pleasantly surprised when I came through with a 14:22 split (5:19 average) for 2.7 miles. I just tried to maintain the effort during the next loop and I split 2.7 miles in 14:13 (5:16 average). Considering the wind I was very happy with this, as the effort felt pretty hard, but did not feel unmanageable. I then left the park to run the last 3 miles of the tempo on the roads. I split the last three miles in 15:35 (5:11 average) with individual mile splits of 5:17 and 5:05 during this section. The wind was not as bad during the last three miles, as it was a cross wind the whole time that switched off and on from a headwind to a tailwind, but generally did not hurt me as much as earlier when I was running on a loop (it helps that the last 2 miles has a net downhill). Total time for the 9.5 mile tempo was 50:19 (5:17 pace), at which point I slowed down to run the last mile home. As I made it to the bottom of the hill I realized that I still had a shot at breaking 2 hours for the run, and I sped up quite a bit over the last quarter in order to break the 2 hour mark.
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