Had a great group planned for today: MacK, Ali, SteveK, and TylerS, but 11 inches of snow fell overnight, which is too much for my car to wade through, so yet another Saturday run messed with by mother nature. I was originally thinking to do a 12 mile tempo, but after thinking about being 2 weeks out from my marathon, I decided to cut it to 9 miles. Mother nature turns it into a solo run on the treadmill. I warmed up 4 miles, then started the tempo, with a plan to start at tinman pace (8.9 mph or 6:44) then increase after three miles to marathon pace, then increase again the last three miles. Well, that turned out to be ambitious. I settled for maintaining tinman. So I did 6 miles at tinman (break at 5.25 for potty) then dropped the pace for the last three miles, eventually ending up at 9.4 or 9.5, I don't remember which. Each time I increased pace it was hard to keep up for .5 mile, then it got better, then it would start over as I increased again. I am not sure what makes me such a wuss on the treadmill, but this is a good tempo effort, and 18 miles on the treadmill this morning makes running 26.2 in balmy AZ sound REALLY fun. So I am getting excited! I also put the race in the course tool yesterday to see what my splits could look like. So a 2:45 marathon is about 6:18 pace, but a couple of the middle miles could be as slow as 6:30 or so with me being on target for 2:45, because there is a grade increase, and its a little chunky. Still, there's never a mile with even a 1% grade increase, so its pretty flat. I figure ideal 1/2 marathon splits for 2:45 would be 1:23, 1:22. I think I will be between 2:45 (very good day) and 2:50 (decent day). There is an 11 sec/mile difference between the two times, so I need to not panic if some of my splits are 2:50 instead of 2:45 splits. I do want the first half to feel easier than the first 1/2 of St G, where I felt like I went out too fast for the conditions and for how I felt. So ideal splits for 2:50 according to the course tool is 1:25:23, 1:24:37. So I hope I feel chipper and ready to go in two weeks. weight 117 (all the sweating associated w/treadmill-I even drank 14 oz over the course of the run and lost that much - wow)
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