Progress

On September 27 (the Sunday before last) I took my fitness out for a test drive to see where I was at after having been out 11 weeks but at that point having three weeks of training under my belt. I guess you'd call it a time trial. I did 7.86 miles at an overall pace of 7:24. That was much better than I could have done a week or two earlier, but I hammered it pretty good and 7:24 wasn't very fast. I'll say in hindsight that I might could have gone a tiny bit faster but was really unsure as to how hard I could push it.

So tonight I went out, loaded for bear, ready to tackle the same course and see how much progress I've made. I did 46 miles last week so I'm getting back up there, but this week will be light because my wife was out of town for four days so I had the boys alone and was only able to take them out in the jogging stroller once, for five miles. They're kind of over it. I definitely was well-rested, having run only once since Saturday morning's long-run of 14 miles.

I was a little slow getting started and posted a 7:24 first mile, but things picked up significantly after that. So much so that by the time I was done I had brought the overall pace down to 6:54, a 30 second per mile improvement over what I did just 11 days ago. Still not where I want to be with just a little over two weeks before the half marathon but I didn't figure to have all my fitness back by then. I would like to be able to do a 1:27-1:28 but we'll have to wait to put a pencil to it two weeks from now.