The Rest Of The Week

Following on the heels of my 10 mile hard-tempo on New Year's Eve, I did an easy 5.37 at my mom's on Thursday. On Friday I went out for some speedwork and cool-down milage. I headed to the .7 mile path for four uninspired repeats, then continued around the New Territory loop for a total of 7.58 miles. The repeat times were nothing to get too excited about but I did them. They were: 4:20 (6:18 pace), 4:11 (6:04 pace), 4:05 (5:58 pace), 4:08 (6:01 pace). Dang it was hot yesterday afternoon.

This morning I met up with Brian King at 6 AM for some long-run milage. Since he's doing the full marathon in two weeks he wanted 20+ but I didn't want to go that long so he got in around 4.5 miles before I met him on the New Territory loop. We did an abbreviated version of our long-run out and back course because we were concerned that heavy rain had been forecasted. We headed over to the park on the other side of 59 (about 5.35 miles from my house), then headed back. We added some other doglegs once we got back into New Territory and I ended up with exactly 16 miles once I went just past my house and around the corner at the end of my block. Conditions were less than ideal this morning, with the temperature at around 68-70 degrees. We got a drink of water at the park but by the time we passed another watering hole at about mile 17 for Brian, 13 for me, we were parched. We held a strong pace without even trying. Here are my mile splits:

7:51
7:31
7:19
7:32
7:36
7:21
7:22
7:16
7:20
7:15
7:24
7:25
8:10 (water stop)
7:32
7:31
7:26

The average pace of 7:29 was nothing, and given the conditions and the fact that we weren't even worrying about pace, that's very encouraging, especially for Brian.