Good Day For A Run
This morning Steve Schroeder, Brian King and I headed over to Bear Creek Park to meet up with David Minken for our attempt at 15 miles at 3 hour marathon pace (6:52). The conditions this morning were nearly perfect. I would take what we had this morning for the day of the marathon anytime. A little wind but overcast and 45 degrees.
We started with two miles to warm up. But I really wasn't feeling it this morning, and neither was Steve. It wasn't until we had struggled for a few miles that we realized that maybe we still weren't fully recovered from the hard tempo on Wednesday. Whatever the reason, the 6:50 first mile was very uncomfortable, as were the subsequent miles. I never could settle into a groove but soldiered on. All of our miles were sub 6:50 (as best I can remember) but we did have three stops in there and I kept my watch running for those in order to get a true duration and true average pace.
At about seven miles of the marathon pace portion, Steve announced that he would target 10 miles at this pace then cool down. I was continuing to struggle with the 6:43s we were turning but told myself, "just focus on getting 10 miles done and worry about the rest from there." That worked pretty well because we soon hit mile eight, then nine. At some point before mile 10 David mentioned that we should be able to do 13 to 15 miles at that pace. Well, now that the idea had been introduced that we might call it a day after 13 I was more comfortable trying to continue on, although I did hope in the back of my mind that we'd do more than that.
We crossed over into Cullen Park for the final few miles and I asked David to let me know when we hit 13 miles so I could mentally calculate our average pace. It was clear that we weren't going to stop at 13 miles and I wanted a mental diversion to let my mind work on. I could sense us picking up the pace a bit toward the end of mile 13 and we seemed to continue to go faster in mile 14. I was dropping back just a bit and knew I'd drop back even further if we kept this up through 15 miles. But as we approached the Highway 6 crossing David let us know that we'd just hit 14 miles, right at the intersection, and it was a job well done. Brian King and I were pretty gassed so we didn't argue. We treated ourselves to a two mile cool-down and I let Brian know that according to my watch we'd just posted a final mile of around 6:15 or so. David, who had doubled back briefly at Highway 6 for some reason, eventually caught up to us on the cool-down and confirmed.
Our overall pace for the 14 miles was 6:53, including three stops. Steve got in his 10 (plus warm-up) and Brian and David and I got in 18 miles total. It was a good morning but I was pretty worried about why I was struggling with that pace until I thought about what we'd done on Wednesday. Now it's taper time.
We started with two miles to warm up. But I really wasn't feeling it this morning, and neither was Steve. It wasn't until we had struggled for a few miles that we realized that maybe we still weren't fully recovered from the hard tempo on Wednesday. Whatever the reason, the 6:50 first mile was very uncomfortable, as were the subsequent miles. I never could settle into a groove but soldiered on. All of our miles were sub 6:50 (as best I can remember) but we did have three stops in there and I kept my watch running for those in order to get a true duration and true average pace.
At about seven miles of the marathon pace portion, Steve announced that he would target 10 miles at this pace then cool down. I was continuing to struggle with the 6:43s we were turning but told myself, "just focus on getting 10 miles done and worry about the rest from there." That worked pretty well because we soon hit mile eight, then nine. At some point before mile 10 David mentioned that we should be able to do 13 to 15 miles at that pace. Well, now that the idea had been introduced that we might call it a day after 13 I was more comfortable trying to continue on, although I did hope in the back of my mind that we'd do more than that.
We crossed over into Cullen Park for the final few miles and I asked David to let me know when we hit 13 miles so I could mentally calculate our average pace. It was clear that we weren't going to stop at 13 miles and I wanted a mental diversion to let my mind work on. I could sense us picking up the pace a bit toward the end of mile 13 and we seemed to continue to go faster in mile 14. I was dropping back just a bit and knew I'd drop back even further if we kept this up through 15 miles. But as we approached the Highway 6 crossing David let us know that we'd just hit 14 miles, right at the intersection, and it was a job well done. Brian King and I were pretty gassed so we didn't argue. We treated ourselves to a two mile cool-down and I let Brian know that according to my watch we'd just posted a final mile of around 6:15 or so. David, who had doubled back briefly at Highway 6 for some reason, eventually caught up to us on the cool-down and confirmed.
Our overall pace for the 14 miles was 6:53, including three stops. Steve got in his 10 (plus warm-up) and Brian and David and I got in 18 miles total. It was a good morning but I was pretty worried about why I was struggling with that pace until I thought about what we'd done on Wednesday. Now it's taper time.
posted by Lance Collins at 6:14 PM
5 Comments:
Lance, here are the splits (without counting the 3 stops).
1. 7:31
2. 7:40
3. 6:51
4. 6:48
5. 6:44
6. 6:46
7. 6:42
8. 6:48
9. 6:42
10. 6:38
11. 6:43
12. 6:43
13. 6:43
14. 6:38
15. 6:32
16. 6:20
17. 7:32
18. 7:26
Nice run! Let's do this again in a couple weeks!
Dang, now that is some work! Hopefully, I'm not more than a half hour behind you in 3 weeks.
Good Running.
Bez,
What race is in three weeks?
Hey thanks for the splits. Looking at the times it seems that the pace got faster the second half. Pretty nice to run a negative split from the first nine miles. Signed Junior.
Lance, did you already forget about the annual pie eating contest in 3 weeks?
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