After catching up on my sleep a little bit last night (need to improve in this area), I went on my second of three long-slow runs that I am planning to get in before the Salt Lake Marathon. I followed the same course that I ran on my first long run that took place on January 1st, a recap of the course is as follows:
Started at Big Cottonwood Park ran to 45th South and 5th East to Liberty Park to The Gateway (i.e., the last 8.3 miles of the Salt Lake Marathon Course) then up to the State Capital building (1 lap around it) to the mouth of City Creek Canyon to the University of Utah by way of 11th Avenue to Sugar House Park then back to Big Cottonwood Park.
Compared to the long run that I did on the first of this month, I added 2.1 miles of distance to the course by running a lap around the State Capital building and by taking a longer way both to Sugar House Park and home from Sugar House Park. The total distance was 26.6 miles in a time of 4:12:00 (i.e., 9:28 minutes per mile). Not a bad pace considering the traffic, snowy sidewalk conditions (especially on Foothill Blvd from 1500 to 2100 South), and that I stopped and jogged in place a few times to write down some notes. In regards to the latter excuse for slowness, I always try to take a pin and notepad with me--especially on the long runs--and write down any great ideas that pop into my head; that is, on a four-plus-hour run there is plenty of time to think. Katherine Switzer wrote about how she took notes on her long runs in her book Marathon Woman and I thought it was a tremendous idea; therefore, I incorporated it into my routine.
My non-running work out consisted of 200 sit-ups, 12 bridges (held each for approximately 10 seconds), and 12 metronomes. | 