20 miler

I was pretty sure that 20 miles yesterday would be tough, especially after racing on Thursday night, and I was right. It didn't rain at all yesterday, which was pretty amazing, but when the sun was out, it felt hot and steamy. I drank 4 bottles of water during my run and still felt really dehydrated by the time I was done. In the first few hours after my run, I drank at least a gallon of water, trying to rehydrate.

I didn't push the pace at all, just wanting to cover the distance. According to the Daniels' Running Formula book, I should be doing my long runs close to a 9:00 pace right now, but I was way slower than that yesterday. I hovered around a 10:00 pace for the first 15 miles and then slowed down for the last 5. I looked at my running log and I hadn't really run 20 miles since Memorial Day weekend. I've done 20 miles a couple times since then, but always on trails and always mixing in walking a lot. So, just getting in the distance on the roads was a good thing. My marathon is 14 weeks from today.

Last night, my wife and I had friends over for dinner to celebrate our wedding anniversary, which was actually last Saturday. We had originally planned the dinner for last weekend, but when the VT100 race director died unexpectedly, we spent last Saturday at his memorial service - a sad way to "celebrate" our anniversary.

We drank some nice wines last night, including two great California Cabs from 1987 - Mondavi Reserve and Montelena Reserve. We finished dinner with a sparkling ice wine from Canada - a tasty but expensive wine that I wish I could afford to drink more often.

This past week was my best training week in quite a while. I ran 5 days, with a tempo day, a race, and a long run. I lifted 3 times and I had one cross-training session. I need more weeks like this one if I'm going to be successful at my marathon in November.