My First Blog Post – 4/2/09

Great week (weather aside :)! I’m back and healthy and have had some really great workouts.

On Sunday I tried my first marathon pace workout inside of a long run. I did 20 miles total, 7 as a “warm up” (7:30 pace), then 12 at marathon pace (6:50), then a mile “shuffle” as a cool down. This is a FABULOUS workout for a marathon. At about 8 miles my legs started to feel dead (they were already tired before the run started), but you have to force yourself to run through that and to keep on pace. I made sure my last mile was really strong, clocking that in 6:23. I started out running this with my training partner, but she dropped back at about 8 miles. She’s been training a lot more/more consistently than I have, and during the first 7 miles I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to keep up. But, I was able to… and left her about 2 minutes behind me. That gave me confidence that my strength really is in the LONG, HARD stuff, and that I’m probably in better shape than I think. I was also excited that I can easily find my marathon pace and hold it steady — my mile splits were consistently 6:49, 6:50, 6:50, 6:49, 6:51, etc, without too much monitoring!

The rest of this week’s focus has been on endurance. I’ll hit 70 miles this week (first time, ever!), and so far my legs are responding well. They’re also adapting to the higher mileage — yesterday I did a 15 mile easy run, and they aren’t too sore today. Last week that same 15 mile middle-of-the-week run really drained my legs. So, that’s exciting!!

P.S. I went out for the first time on my new Marwe 610s (I broke down and bought a pair) — I love them! I was also surprised how much more stable I felt on them this year vs. last year. My goal is to get out 1-2 times per week for 30-45 minutes, just nice and easy, just to get used to balancing.