Psalm 91:1 NKJV He who dwells in the secret place

You know when you have a day-off from running you expect to be motivated to start back up. It seems like the last three Monday's I've had to drag myself out the door to run when I take Sunday's off. I should run on Sunday too, because usually I have the carving to do so. If I would have during this training cycle all my mileage week totals would have been in the high 70's and low 80's. Oh well the mileage totals for me are not that important what I get per year.

Today was hill repeats, and I got out the door so late that I didn't go to my usual spot. I decided to run a hill on our overpass its only 150m's, but I figured that's better than nothing. I ran two miles to this overpass for a good warm-up which felt good after the day off. I did 9 X 150ms and ran two of the downhill’s fast. I felt pretty good I pushed at a real hard pace in the low 6 minute pace (I didn't record the intervals, because I forgot to set my Garmin for that type of training workout. I just have overall pace for the whole run.) One observation of this workout is the uphill comes up so fast, because of the small distance between intervals. Maybe it’s me, but this short distance Hill Repeats are just as tough as 400s.

After I got done doing the intervals I decided to run the next 5 miles at marathon pace (I’ll have to display those later). I nailed the 5 miles, averaging around a 6:35 pace. I felt like I could have dropped the pace lower but I didn’t want to over do it. That's a pretty good work-out doing a marathon pace right after hill repeats with no break.

Totals 10.2 miles at a 6:35 pace in 1:07
This afternoon at the health club I did something different, rather than run two miles as a warm-up I ran 2.5 miles at marathon pace and the last .5 at 3% grade and the first 2 miles at 1 to 1.5% grade. I really wanted to get more miles in at the (6:40) pace. I really think I should drop my marathon pace to a 6:30, because I know I could run at this pace for the marathon because of my tempo times. I’m going to play around with this Friday when I do 12 miles in my 18 mile long run.

Total for the day: 12.7 miles.

Today was a simple easy run. Other than the first 2 miles are going at a very slow grade uphill and mile 3 you  climb 500+  feet.  I like doing this course once a week because of  the hilly portion and then the downhill.  It's a great run to prepare for Boston, other than I wish I could run the downhill first then the uphill, but where I start from my house it's impossible.  I've often thought about driving to the top then starting the decline and then I would be able to run the hill on the last portion.  Good course if you did two loops on your long run then you could hit that 500+ feet hill twice.  The hill lasts over a mile.  I did one 20 miler on this course where I looped it twice.
I believe I showed a "gif" image of the elevation from this course in one of my blog entries.  My Garmin 205 does a great job at showing the elevation, especially when you can download your runs to motionbased.com.

During the training period for Boston I've really ran a lot of uphiill and downhill courses as much as I can.  I believe this has really helped my endurance level.  I can only hope, and give God the blessing for helping me.

Today I did a seven mile tempo run.  I felt really good and probably the fastest tempo run for the start of this year.  I wanted to see how my body would handle a marathon pace mile after the tempo run instead of dropping down to a cool-down mile.   I felt fine and could have continued with the marathon pace miles.  Good training day leading towards Boston.  Overall totals  10.4 miles  at a 6:20 pace in 1:06.

The course is the same course I've done all my tempo runs, mostly flat with one small uphill and downhill.  There was a strong head wind at mile 7 that I really and to push through at 25 mph.
 

Mile 1: 7:24 (warm-up)
Mile 2: 5:59 (start tempo)
Mile 3: 5:53
Mile 4  5:52
Mile 5  6:00
Mile 6  6:03
Mile 7  6:07
Mile 8  6:05
Mile 9  6:32 (marathon pace mile)
Mile 10 6:50 (should have cool-down slower than this, but wasn't focusing on the cool-down I guess)

Today I ran 9.2 miles at a 7:14 pace faster than I wanted to, but they felt easy.  Today is just setting up for tomorrows 18 miler where 12 miles will be at marathon pace.  I was tired this morning I had to be at work by 6:50, because Idaho Power was shutting down power at our University, and I had to make sure that our systems would be okay on the backup APS power units, or else we would starting shutting them down if Idaho Power took too long.   Our battery backups will hold the power for 25 minutes.   Idaho Power only had the power off for 9 minutes.

Rather than go back to my office... I did my run at 8:30am.  I feel really tired today I need to get to bed early for the run tomorrow.
 

Friday

Well today was a real test where I'm at with my training: success or bust. I scheduled a 12 mile marathon pace run within the 18 miler. I mentioned earlier that I needed to decide on a marathon pace either 6:30 or 6:40 or somewhere in between. I need to have that confidence to know where I stand, because I've been concerned about being wishy washy with my marathon pace.

It was about 8:30 in the morning when I headed out, and the temperature was 32 degrees not short weather yet, but it did warm up
to 70 degrees for the day. I proceeded on a course that was up and down in elevation to make things interesting.  To make a long story short I nailed it, and I felt like I could have dropped my marathon pace to a 6:20 or 6:25. Truly I thank God, because he's the one that's put me where I'm at, and helped me with this run today. I was praising him at mile 12, because I knew I nailed the pace miles, and I really thanked God for the help. I felt so good that I did 16 marathon pace miles. I'm really shocked and surprised because the first 12 miles I was fighting against a 10 mph wind. But it just felt so easy the whole run. For the 16 miles I averaged a 6:30 pace, so maybe there's my answer. I was shocked and surprised, but I really have never tested what I can really do.

I don't know what I will try in Boston, do I even try to drop the pace lower? Do I just try to stay between 6:30 and 6:40? Who knows the answer. Maybe I'll decide when I just start running the race. But I feel real good about my chances being under 3 hours. I just hope the weather is cool.

I think next week I'm going to try to find a gradual long downhill (at least 8 miles) that has a little up hill then another gradual downhill to really be close to the Boston course (probably an 18 to 20 miler).

The rest of the day I took my 2 year old son out for pizza and I ate a foot long meatball sandwich at Fazoli's. Then we went to the park for 2 hours and climbed rocks to the top of the park. It's a pretty steep climb. Then we played on the park toys till 5pm. Wonderful day, my wife wondered when we were coming home. I didn't even sit down and rest the whole day.

(Sasha I love the html editor)

Total 20.2 miles at a 6:38 pace in 2:14.

mile 1 7:04

mile 2 6:32
mile 3 6:36
mile 4 6:33
mile 5 6:33
mile 6 6:31
mile 7 6:40
mile 8 6:28
mile 9 6:29
mile 10 6:35
mile 11 6:38
mile 12 6:30
mile 13 6:20
mile 14 6:44 (went up a major hill didn't try to keep same pace. I went up easy. )
mile 15 6:18
mile 16 6:16
mile 17 6:27

mile 18 7:01 ( Start cool-down miles)
mile 19 7:07
mile 20 7:10

Saturday:

Was a recovery run which I had to wait till the evening to run, which would be the first time in the training where I've ran in the evening.  My family and I had to travel to Twin Falls, Idaho (110 miles away) to my daughters soccer games.  They won one and lost one, and believe it or not I got a sunburn because it was over 70 degrees.

I ran 8.7  miles at a 7:27 pace in 1:04.  I really wasn't sore from Saturday's run, but I was tire into the first mile, because of all the driving, but I quickly restored my energy in the run. 

My wife also ran a mile and my kids too, because we went to the track for the run, and we all went to subway and pigged out afterwards.