TexasLindsey

8 miles at 5am. Weather=70F, 40% humidity, dark.  Average pace = 10:38/m.

Met Tim this morning at the corner.  He ended up running 22 on Saturday and 20 on Sunday.  He's been doing back to back 20 milers for several weekends now.  He said he was tired and he thought he was getting some shin splints so he wanted to run slow.  We started out at a 12:00 pace!!!  We did that for the first two miles!   It felt sooooo slow.  We eventually speed up to 10:00 for the last 6.   I started liking the 10 pace.  It was a nice change.  I didn't even feel like I was running.  I bet my HR was super low.  I told Tim maybe we should mix it up more often and do some really slow, medium long runs during the week. 

The only problem is that it of course takes a longer time to run this slow.  I was 15 minutes later than normal and I got to work late today. 

8 miles at 6am.  Weather=72F, 50% humidity, dark then sunny.  Average pace= guessing around 8:30-9:00/m ... my watch wasn't charged.

9 miles at 5am.  Weather=73F, humid, dark.  Average pace=10:03/m.

Ran with Tim.  He is peaking this week in his training for Saint George.  He's on track to do 130 miles!  Been doing doubles every day.  This morning he wanted to run really slow.  He's trying to break 3:00 marathon.  He's been trying for this goal every year I've known him and each year he's been barely missed it.  He's had some unlucky weather for many of the attempts though.  Like last year's Galveston Marathon, he did 3:04 competing with a 20-30 mph wind!  Ugh! 

So he's been trying something different with training this year. He's trying to run lots of miles 80-130 a week, but most of them be slow.  Then he does MP miles at the end of 20-24 milers and he does track workouts. I hope it works for him!  He's really working hard.

My training plan is less structured.  Every day is a new day and a new challenge.  I am just trying the best I can.  Sometimes running works out and sometimes life gets in the way.  I'm not putting too much pressure on myself because I've got alot going on with having young kids and working full time.  It's still fun though.  I'm actually surprised I'm running relatively fast on the weekends and I'm still not injured in at all. Knock on wood!  I am hoping to do 3:30 marathon at NYC, but if I don't do it, I'm not going to be heartbroken.   When my life is less chaos, I might try to step it up and see how low I can get my PR. 

Hoo ya!  I did it!  I really actually ran more than 17 miles without getting injured!

Weather was crummy.  It was 82F, almost 20mph wind at first before the rain hit, humid at first and raining at the end.  Average pace was 8:22/m.  ‎

I felt great the first 12 mile loop that we did.  First mile was 8:45.  The next 11 were 8:00/m average with only miles 8 and 9 being faster (7:50 and 7:43).   I was the one driving the pace mostly.  I can't seem to help myself.  Britt (who has much faster PR's than me) was reminding me to slow down if I'm going to make it 20 miles today.  Tim also told me that on marathon training I have to be patient.  Maybe that is my problem here.  I do not have patience (or time) to train for a full marathon at this point in my life. 

Then we stopped at the running store before embarking on the next loop of 8 miles.  The next four miles were getting harder and slower (about 8:20's), but I was still holding on although I fell behind Britt and Tim.  They were holding steady at the 8:00/m pace.  There were still some other people behind me from our group though.

By the 15-mile water stop, the rest of the group decided to go further up the trail before turning around so their total would be an even 20.   I just wanted this experience to be over as quickly as possible... I resisted peer pressure from Tim to tough it out and I turned around early to head straight to my car. 

 "THE WALL": Last 4 miles were of the 9:00/m variety by myself in the rain and were excruciating to the point that I found it impossible to run without making a really scrunched up mean face. I was laughing (on the inside while still making scrunched up mean face) about what passing cars might have been thinking.  Yeah, you know, I guess I might have gone too fast in the beginning when I was feeling "great"! Ha, ha! Marathon training is tricky! I'm not sure I have the patience for it. I much prefer half-marathons, for which there are no 20 mile training runs!

Reality check: I'm going to need to run 8:00/m for 26.2 if I'm going to reach my goal at NYC. I couldn't imagine doing that today. Hopefully, the next two months of training and cooler, less humid weather will get me there.

One great thing is that my legs were great the whole way.  No injuries.  Not even a blister.  Of course it was hard to move them in the final miles, but that's different than injury, plus they are fine now after I have stopped running.  I am very happy about that.   This is the farthest I've run in a long, long time.    Because of this fact, I am considering this run a success.

 I'm just trying to figure out when my next training run should be.  The running store owner, James, suggested that I try to force myself to run 9:00 pace in the first miles of the next 20 miler just as an experiment...  I know what he is saying is right.  It's so hard for me to hold myself back when I'm running with faster people because I guess I have this mental thing where I want to be in the lead pack.  However, if I run by myself, it's hard for me to force myself to speed up if I started out at a 9:00 pace.  Tricky, tricky.  What to do, what to do.