Weekly Wrap-Up: August 21-27

This week, 4 of my runs were uneventful, then Saturday had enough stuff for several runs.

The weather got slightly less terrible at the end of the week, but it’s still unpleasant.

Weight Check: 166.2 pounds, down 1.8 from last week. OK, I’ll take it. From watching my weight over the course of the week, I know that pretty much all of that happened as a result of my long run. I still drank too much Mountain Dew, but I guess I did OK otherwise.

Total: 40.05 miles

That’s two weeks in a row with over 40 miles. I expect that streak to continue for a while.

For Monday’s run, I don’t have any new ways to say how bad the weather was. My legs felt a little bit tired, presumably from my long run, but it wasn’t too terrible. My pace seemed to be a bit inconsistent, and I’m not quite sure why. I kept the effort “easy” until the last quarter mile or so.

Tuesday, the weather still sucked, but I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: hill workouts suck at any temperature. My legs were OK at first, and got more tired on each interval, but I kind of expected that. My pace generally improved as I went along, although it wasn’t exactly a straight line. I did manage to get my fastest pace on the last interval, though.

On Wednesday, the weather was brutal again. My legs felt OK, I guess, but they just didn’t seem to want to move very fast. I did manage to gradually increase my pace each mile. I kept the effort easy until the last quarter of a mile. Not a great run, but I survived.

Friday, we finally got a little bit of a break in the weather. It still wasn’t great, but it was much better than it’s been. My legs felt OK. I tried to keep the effort easy. I think I may have gone a little faster than I should have on mile 2, but I pulled back on mile 3. I did push the pace a little on the last quarter mile or so.

And then there was Saturday. I’m not sure what to think about this one.

So, I was supposed to run 7 miles easy, then 6 miles around marathon pace, then 2 miles easy. OK. The weather was slightly better than it’s been, and there was an occasional breeze which helped.

I was pleasantly surprised with how consistent my pace was for the first 7 miles. My legs felt OK through this stretch.

Miles 8 and 9 were good. I sped up, and went up a hill (and back down) on 9. Mile 10 felt like a struggle, so I slowed down a little bit.

Mile 11 felt like a disaster. I had to stop to use the bathroom during this mile. (I stopped my watch, though.) I guess my pace wasn’t as bad as I felt, although the break probably helped a little.

I rebounded a little bit for mile 12 and 13. My legs still felt pretty tired, but I was able to push through.

And that concluded the marathon pace portion of the run. Which is good, because at that point, I had nothing left.

I walked most of mile 14. I still had nothing on mile 15, but I did manage to slowly run almost all of it, with just a short walk break in the middle.

I had Gu at 5 miles and 10 miles. My second Gu was before the bathroom break, so that may have made it a little less effective than usual.

I’m still not entirely sure why mile 11 and mile 14 were so bad (for 11, it was more that it felt bad), but both times I did manage to recover a little bit.

Also, just to make things a little bit worse, I forgot to use my Body Glide. Ouch!

I’ve had a day to think about it, and I think where I screwed up was miles 8 and 9. I think I went a little too fast. I ran those miles in 10:35 and 10:38. If I’m shooting for a 5 hour marathon, my pace needs to be 11:26/mile. For a training run like this, somewhere around 11:00/mile would probably be OK (and that’s roughly where I ended up on miles 10, 12, and 13), but 10:38 (or faster) will lead to trouble.

That’s really all I can do, figure out what went wrong, then fix it next time.

Next week, I’ve got a fartlek workout and a 17 miler. The weather looks like it will be more like Friday and Saturday than earlier last week, so that’s a plus. Also, September 1 is Friday, so I guess I need to do a monthly wrap-up as well.