What ever it takes!

Got 8 hours of sleep last night for the first time in quite a while so I was feeling pretty good this morning.  This was my last long run in Paradise, and it was a perfect morning once again.  Pretty much ran my normal route except when I got to the end of the beach instead of turning around I ran across the bridge to Miami.  Ran to Port of Miami where all the cruise ships leave from and then back.

5 miles on the sand, 7 on the boardwalk, 4 on the road.

16 miles in 2:07:01  7:56/mile avg pace.

P.M.

Why do so many people choose to run at night when it was clearly designed to be done in the morning?

8 long hot humid miles in the dark on the beach.  Tomorrow morning I fly home so I'm not sure how the running thing is going to work out.

Sitting in the Delta Crown room waiting to leave sunny Florida and go back to reality.  Woke up early and ran a quick 6.25 miles before my flight. 

Airports need treadmills!!

6.25 in 48:44  7:48 avg pace

A late flight, and a wife that has different views about what I should do in my spare time than I do made it so I didn't get my afternoon run in yesterday.

15 miles on the treadmill in 1:52:52  7:31 avg pace

I got on the scale for the first time since I started this little weight loss experiment last week.  And guess what?  I didn't loose a single pound.  Seriously, I've ran 112 miles all between 7:30 and 8:00min pace in the last 7 days, haven't eaten great due to travel but it's not like I was eating at Chuck a Rama everyday and somehow I didn't loose anything.  I don't get it, what is wrong with me???

P.M.

5 miles with my 9 year old after school around the neighborhood dirt roads.  The hills and gravel roads where harder on him than I thought they would be so we were pretty slow.

5 miles in 40:54  8:11 avg pace

This is totally a new type of running to me, I've never run at a pace where I felt like I could seriously go forever without ever getting depleted.  I don't drink water or eat anything and never really feel drained.  My legs do get a little sore but seem to be recovering day to day.

16 miles in 2:04:25  7:46 avg pace

P.M.

Went to the Gym for lunch, weather was perfect for a run outside, so what did I do?  I ran on the treadmill.   Was planning on 6 but I was actually enjoying myself so much I decided to finish off the full hour.

8 miles in 1:01:10 7:38 avg pace

Still going....

16 miles in 2:03:30, 7:43 avg pace

Guess I better get the Christmas lights up today, there's a storm a brewin'

P.M.

Hung lights all morning, almost done just need a Lowes run for a couple more things.  Broke away for a "quick" run with the dog.  First signs that I'm finally falling apart, my left knee started bugging me pretty bad for some reason, which is strange cause I've never had my knee bother me before, I've had every other problem but not the knee.  I blame it on light hanging instead of resting in between runs.

6 miles in 50:17  8:22 avg pace.  Ouch!!  That actually had to do with a very out of shape dog more than the knee.

1 more food for thought, extracting rocks out of the souls of Nike Free's is almost as good as popping bubble wrap.

Seriously I'm not sure what to make of all this, I may keep up the high mileage for another week just cause I have the week off but there is no way I could do this and have a normal work schedule.

I don't really feel like I'm getting a whole lot out of it truthfully,  I'm not really tired when I get done, I don't even sweat, and my legs have been more tired after walking around convention centers all day, and I haven't lost a single pound so I'm not really sure what to do.  Strange that 20 miles a day doesn't wear me down at all.

8 miles in 1:04:00 Then I felt like I needed a change of pace so I did the next 8 in 56:00.

16 miles in 2:00:00 7:30 avg pace.

No afternoon run today, I'm planning a little somethin' special for tomorrow morning.

Well, I think I defined a new level of crazy (or stupid) today.  This is the sort of thing that happens when you give someone like me too much idle time.  All my long runs on the treadmill this last week made me think of lots of things,  “What’s for dinner” “When should I hang my Christmas lights?”  “I wonder if I could run a full marathon on the treadmill?”  “I wonder if I could run a marathon PR on the treadmill?”  You know, those kinds of questions.

Yesterday on my run I thought about running 26 miles on Thanksgiving morning just for fun, then I thought I should just do it tomorrow since I feel good now.  It has also haunted me that my marathon PR was 2:51:30 at Des News and that was after my (at the time) biggest mileage week as a “training run”.  I can run 6:30 pace pretty easy and always think I could just run 6:30 pace forever, so why don’t I even have a marathon time to back that up?  Basically because every time I run a Marathon setting a PR by a minute or 2 never interests me, I always go out too hard, blow up and end up feeling bad for myself for weeks after.

So anyway, all this made me devise a crazy plan for this morning, wake up early go to the gym and run a PR marathon.  Wow!  Who thinks like that, especially after running by far the furthest mileage week I've ever had (not quite 140 miles this week)?  Apparently me.  I couldn’t sleep very good last night, first sign this was the real deal, I woke up and 3:30 and decided to get on with it so I headed to the gym.  I wanted to make it as honest as possible, which meant when I hit the start button on my Garmin I couldn’t hit stop until I was done, I knew I would have 2 treadmill resets, one at mile 9 and one and mile 18 (to keep the splits easier to track) and wasn’t sure how much time this would cost me.  I decided to use those 2 resets as my only “aid stations”.  I also wore my HR monitor to keep me honest from doing something crazy like, (jumping off the treadmill for a rest while it still went).  So anyway, I felt that these measures would make it honest so I could feel good about it.

Started at 9.2 mph 6:31 pace then at mile 5 I bumped it to 9.3 to try and make up for the resets, did that again at mile 14.  The resets only ended up taking about 15 seconds so not to bad.  My HR went pretty high at first and I thought maybe I wasn’t going to make it, by the first reset though I was feeling pretty good and decided I would make it.  By the second reset I was actually feeling better and better the longer I went, my HR even was dipping down a few bpm too, not sure how I got feeling better after 20 miles.  So at mile 20 when I realized this was really going to happen I kept bumping up the speed every mile thinking I wish I could finish all marathons like this.  I really wanted to break 2:50 so I pushed pretty hard the final 2 miles.

In many ways this was the best marathon I’ve ever done, no bathroom lines, no long bus ride, no standing in the cold, and it started right on time.  Well, 4 minutes late for one last bathroom break. 

Does it count as a real PR?  Who knows?  I say yes, but it’s my run and my blog so I can say whatever I want.

26.2 miles in 2:49:26 6:28 avg pace.   A 2:04 PR. 

Distance	Time	Avg HR	Max HR
1	6:32	153	167
2	6:31	160	162
3	6:31	161	163
4	6:32	161	163
5	6:31	162	164
6	6:27	162	165
7	6:27	163	166
8	6:27	163	165
9	6:27	163	167
10	6:46	162	168
11	6:31	162	165
12	6:31	161	164
13	6:32	160	162
14	6:31	159	162
15	6:27	160	162
16	6:29	160	162
17	6:25	159	162
18	6:23	160	165
19	6:45	159	163
20	6:31	159	161
21	6:27	159	164
22	6:27	158	161
23	6:23	158	161
24	6:23	158	160
25	6:19	159	162
26	6:14	163	165
26.2	1:06	165	167
Total	2:49:26	160	168

 http://connect.garmin.com/activity/129577165