Turns out that goal may not be lofty enough.
I haven't really been following a structured training plan for this race, so I didn't know until early this morning what today's long run would be. After last week's ten, I've heard from coworkers that I could run eight-minute miles for the whole 13.1. So I decided to go for it. Twelve miles at 8:00.
It rained about an inch in the overnight, and I took off at about 9:15 this morning, on an off day from work. A gorgeous day for a run. Peanut butter toast and water were my only fuel. Well, that and a nice, hot cup of coffee. In hindsight, I probably should have eaten a little more.
It takes about a half mile or so to get the pace dialed in, and after that, I made steady progress on getting onto goal pace. Splits needed to be around 2:00 per quarter. I find I like measuring splits that way instead of by the half mile-- helps me stay on pace.
The first five were pretty easy, until I hit the stairs to get to the bridge that takes me over the river. Very soon after that I stopped to fill my bottle, which took a few minutes. I felt pretty good through about 9.5, when I hit a decent hill. Turns out that the stairs and that hill were the only two times I really missed my splits. Everything else was either below 2:00 or very close. I did take two GU gels-- one at four and the other at nine. I feel good about how I timed those.
The last half mile was difficult, but I clocked in at 1:36:20 for the run-- an 8:02 pace. I didn't quite meet the goal, but I got pretty dang close. It even lets me adjust my goal. Now I can aim at a 1:45 half and really like my chances.
No comments:
Post a Comment