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

Run 11.23 miles at a 7:05 pace in 1:19 this morning.  I ran 8 miles with the dog on a hilly course.  The last three miles I did (6:36, 6:19, 6:00).  I told my wife that I need to start running without the dog with only three weeks left to the marathon, so I can focus more on my training.

 Well the last two weeks I've got good runs on the Pocatello Marathon course  22 miles and 20.7 miles.  This week I will do 18 miles with a small tempo in the long run and MP miles. 

Today I did 10 X 400 but I messed up my Ironman watch and only recorded six of them. I took Sasha's advice to see if I can do these faster by taking a longer interval between each repeat.

1. 78 (400m rest)
2. 82 (400m rest)
3. 83 (400m rest
4. 83 (800m rest)
5. 82 (800m rest)
6. 82
7-10 (data lost).

Not that great... my biggest problem is I seem to get tired on the last 100m and I think I lose my running form. I know I tried pushing really hard on these six. On the 7-10 repeats I seemed to relax my form and tried to run more straight up, and I actually felt faster. The problem is I didn't realize I messed up on my Ironman watch to get these splits. Next time I'm going to use the Garmin.

After the track work I did some MP miles. It seems if I relax my legs more I run faster with shorter strides. Something I'm definitely going to have to work on. I've only started doing track work since last November so I have a lot to improve on.

Totals 13.22 miles at a 6:23 pace in 1:24.

Run just a little bit at lunch.

I ran 10.4 miles this morning for my easy run day at a 7:22 pace in 1:17.  I basically ran all over the city including up to our football stadium the mini-dome.  The dog ran all 10.4 miles with me, a new mileage record for my Golden Retriever.

 Lunch:  Treadmill 2.6 miles, then I lifted weights on my upper body and legs.  Maybe not a good thing for tomorrow's tempo run.
 

This morning I left the house around 6:30am and wanted to do a 6-5 mile tempo.  I was a little sore for the first two miles of the warm-up because of the weight lifting that I did yesterday on my legs.  I knew this would be the case, and it wasn't a smart thing to do the day before a tempo run.

Tempo Miles

Mile 1. 6:14 (getting warm-up and my legs weren't feeling comfortable).

Mile 2. 5:55 (starting to feel better with the legs).

Mile 3. 5:59 ( going up the hill seemed to make my legs dead, should have been faster).

Mile 4. 5:56  (felt a little bit more refreshed running pretty much on a flat portion of the course for this mile.  Still should have been faster)

Mile 5. 5:47 (I seemed to gain an energy burst on this flat section of the course.  Now this is what I should be consistent at for the tempo pace. Then again I've really only starting dipping into the 5 minute mile range since last year.

Mile 6. 5:57  (I really messed up on this mile.  I slowed down because I thought I was done with the tempo miles until I looked at my Garmin and realized I still had one more mile in the tempo.  I was already half way through the mile so I had to kick the last half of the mile at a fast pace to average below 6 minutes again.)

All in all I guess it was a good run... I'm just disappointed that I can't average a consistent pace.  I would like to average around a 5:47,  maybe it's coming.  The more track work I do it will start showing in these types of runs.

Tomorrow is my long run 18 miles, and 5 miles at a between tempo pace and then another 5-6 at marathon pace. Marathon is on September 1st it's coming fast.  Does this sound like a good  strategy?

Last two weeks I've done my long run after my tempo run, and the legs have felt fine. 

Today I did my long run again on the Pocatello Marathon course. 20.60 at 6:37 pace in 2:15. I ran the top portion of the course slower than I did the last two weeks, because I wanted to push the bottom (flat and rolling hills) harder by doing a 3 in 1 run.

The wind was blowing around 15 mph and it was cold being at an altitude of 6,000ft. I started the run at 4:55 and my hands froze for the first 8 miles... it was cold! I seen a skunk at mile 3 and I switched to the opposite side of the road, because the skunk was running downhill with me. I was praying please don't come near me! It's amazing experience up on that course when you run the first 8 miles in the dark.

Miles 6:59, 6:49, 6:40, 6:47, 6:33 (I was trying to keep a steady pace, and it was really hard to want to stay at this slow pace.)
miles 6:22, 6:36, 6:48, 8:01,6:51, 6:50, 6:46, 6:40, 6:48 (still just cruising along and felt good. The wind was very strong... the 8:01 mile was because of a brown code alert.

Miles 6;35, 6:26, 6:08, 5:51, 5:59, 5:53 (I picked up the pace for the ending miles with a tempo pace. The last mile was up the big hill. I was very encouraged by this run. Now the next two weeks my long runs will be shorter with doing over 20 miles three weeks in a row.

Easy 8 mile run today at a 7:32 pace after the long run yesterday. I had to hurry and do this run, because we were going to Salt Lake to drop our kids off for Church camp. Salt Lake is around 2 and a half hours from Pocatello. I had to work till 4am this morning, because of a disk failure in our Sun Fire V440, and I got up about 7:40am to run so I'm beat.