Sorry for the delayed report, but I’ve been busy along with other things. It’s been an emotional two days.
February 23
Well today's run really had me wondering if I was going to be able to accomplish what I wanted, a good marathon pace run. First off I started to develop a cold yesterday afternoon and by night I had a headache. Later on that evening my stomach started hurting, and by that statement I'm sure you know what's going to proceed next. I wasn't able to sleep, and at 1:30am my stomach hurt so bad that I jumped out of bed ran to the toilet and vomited everything I ate that night. That woke my wife up and she said, "your not going to run tomorrow morning", and I thought that was probably the case.
Well, I woke up at 6am and had a stuffy/runny nose and a little bit of a headache, but my stomach was fine. I decided to run, because I couldn't run my long run on Saturday or Sunday I would only have enough time for a recovery run on those days. I thought to myself Boston is important, and If I can run a marathon sick I can surely do this long run.
Now it even gets better, we got dumped on last night almost all the roads were covered in snow and it also rained a little last night so to top things off there was ice underneath the snow (it’s still snowing hard right now). My goal was to run 12 miles at marathon pace in an 18 mile long run.
Anyway, the wind was blowing about 15 to 20 mph, so I started out at 7am at 23 degrees with a warm-up pace.
Mile 1 7:26,
Mile 2 6:59 (still warming up and the wind made it difficult to keep a consistent pace.)
Mile 3 6:56
Mile 4 6:54
Mile 5 6:38 (Marathon pace miles start)
Mile 6 6:40
Mile 7 6:42
Mile 8 6:36
Mile 9 6:36
The next two miles I decided to change my strategy a bit by climbing some major hills about 300ft. I wanted to see after these hills if I could maintain my marathon pace. This would be a good test on the quads and hamstrings. Well this was a stupidity strategy, because those roads were icy and snow-covered and made my pace suffer and made me work extra harder for miles 10 and 11. But that’s okay, because I was able to maintain my marathon pace afterwards fine and the run seemed very comfortable, other than my stuffy, runny nose.
Mile 10 7:02
Mile 11 7:10
Mile 12 6:22
Mile 13 6:22
Mile 14 6:30
Mile 15 6:29
Mile 16 6:39
Mile 17 6:25
Mile 18 6:59
Mile 19 7:30
My total average pace for the 19 miles was 6:47, and marathon pace 6:43, which I really could have easily ran at a faster pace. If I wouldn’t have made a course change on icy/snowy hill roads (I don’t know what I was thinking) it would have been better. At least I know this pace I accomplished well. I really feel confident that I can get well below the sub three goal. But one step at a time there’s a lot of training left. I really felt good that I did as well as I did for not feeling the best, and only having a bagel with honey to fuel my body.
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