17 miles on the track. Nice warm day, 54° and sunshine. As I started this run my goal was to go 15 miles. Once I got a few miles into it I decided I better get some marathon pace miles in, Boston is only 35 days away. I'm still not sure what time I should shoot for, but it's looking like about 3:15. 3:20 is my C goal and 3:10 would be wow I can't believe I ran this fast but did goal. I think I also need to run around Boston a little on Saturday and Sunday to see what this sea level thing is all about. If I have the strength and fitness to run around 3:15 I might pick a few extra minutes since I live and train at 4500 feet. I guess I'll see. So anyway, back to my run today, as I slogged away for the first few miles I thought how can I possibly run a 3:10, that's a 7:15 pace. With my C goal being 3:20 I figured I'd run some 7:38's. I wanted to do the last 5 miles at this pace so here is what happend. 9:24 8:51 8:55 9:03 8:53 8:51 8:02 7:58 7:49 7:36 7:27 7:28 7:15 7:16 7:12 7:12 7:14 total time 2:16:22 8:01 ave pace. Once I hit the 7:15's I decided to see If I could bang out 5 of them. It took a lot of strength and it felt good to tack on a few extra miles. I considered see how many more I could tack on but it was getting very hard and I felt like I would have been entering that zone of foolish training so I made #17 my last. I liked what I did here and feel good about 3:15. This week is going to be another 100 miler or very close to it. | 