Sunday, April 26, 2009

Long Long Run

Ottawa is 4 weeks, and next weekend I am in Palm Springs, with a somewhat strange final long run planned (in Mt San Jacinto park at the top of the tram) so today was my last "normal" long run.  I had been scheduled to cut back a little to 16 but decided that I could probably benefit from one last 20+ with some marathon pace miles.  Decided to go with a relatively flat course (down to the bay, flat around the bay, and uphill home) and do about 23 with 10-12 at marathon pace after doing 8 easy.  Weather was good, in the low 50s with aa light wind and sunny.

Fisrt 1.5 miles climbs up into the hills so kept that easy at 8 pace, then got into a stead groove at 7:30 for the next 6.5 miles.  A little fast for the easy part of a marathon paced run but it felt good so I kept it going.  Then I started the MP miles and found 6:50-6:55 comfortably and just clicked off the miles.  It was flat and other than a little wind down by the bay it felt pretty good.  The first 7 miles went by quickly and then it started to head slightly uphill back towards home.  Not a big climb, just about 50'/mile, but enough to make me notice.  At mile 18 (so after 10 fast miles) the trail goes over some freeways so there are bridges.  I went with the bike ramp VS the steps but the uphill portions kicked my butt.  Struggled to keep it in the 6:50's but got thru.  Mile 20 (12 fast) finished at the top of an overpass and I was ready to slow down, so called it a day after 12 at MP.  The last 3 were just a slog home in the low 8s, which to be honest I could have done without.

Overall 23.24 miles at 7:16 pace (with 12 at 6:52), which was way too fast for a training run.  First 20 went by at 7:10 pace, which was about what I ran at Edinburgh last year.  So now I have 4 weeks of final training to go.  I'll do 2-3 tempos, 2-3 track sessions, a 10k final race the week before and the rest will be easy runs (although Palm Springs may end up being a pretty good effort).

So a solid run, at the end of another solid week of training.  Looking back over the last 6 weeks mileage has been 67, 61, 70, 74, 69 and 63 including a fast half marathon, a fast 10k time trial, lots of tempos, lots of hills and 6 long runs from 21-23.  It's been a little compressed and I'm ready to ease off a little as I get close to the race.

1 comment:

Peter Lubbers said...

Sounds like a pretty fast/long training run--don't overdo it ;-)