Marathon Pace Miles

On Tuesday afternoon, when I was done working for the day, it was nasty outside. It was cold and it was raining hard. All day, I'd been feeling tired, either from the hard run on Saturday or my lifting and wood stacking on Monday or both. I opted out of running and went home and relaxed instead.

Last night, I was planning marathon pace miles - 4 of them as part of an 8-9 mile run. It was cool and drizzly outside, but way better than Tuesday afternoon. I decided that I wanted to run more by feel rather than looking at my Forerunner every couple of minutes. In my marathon, I want to get into a comfortably hard pace early and just run. I think that obsessively checking my Forerunner and adjusting my pace frequently, even if it is a minute adjustment, will be detrimental to my overall performance. Plus, I've noticed that if I want to be running 7:50 pace and I look at the Forerunner and see I'm running 8:10 pace, I tend to over-adjust, and the next time I look, I'll be doing 7:30 or even 7:15 pace.

So, after a 2.5 mile warm-up, I hit the lap button on the Forerunner and I sped up. I pushed my jacket sleeve over the watch so I couldn't glance at it easily. I did check at the mile splits, when the watch beeped at me, just to make sure I was close to marathon pace, but mostly I just ran.

Here are my mile splits:

7:41
7:51
7:43
7:56

The last mile was mostly into the wind and had two short but steep hills.

I was happy with the times for the miles, but I could tell that I still have some residual tiredness from Saturday. My legs just felt beat for the rest of the evening.

I also think I need new shoes. I have broken in the shoes for my marathon, wearing them in my 1/2 marathon and in a 22 and a 24 miler. I usually try to put 50-75 miles on my race shoes before race day, and then set them aside. I've been trying to squeeze extra miles out of some other older shoes recently, trying to save a little money. I always have lots of older pairs of shoes around that seem like they should be good for "just one more run". I've even been wearing some of my trail shoes, primarily Brooks Cascadias, on the roads recently. But, I think it's time to clear out the pile of old shoes and get some new shoes for training.

I'll run an easy 8 today after work and then lift tomorrow morning.

Saturday is a ridiculously busy day right now, but I need to find time to squeeze in 10 Yasso 800s. I have my first pre-season ski school meeting in the morning, I am going to a birthday party for my twin niece and nephew in the afternoon, I have a friend and his family coming over for dinner, and the friend and I need to do some electrical work in my basement before dinner. I think I have a short window from about 11:30-12:45 when I can squeeze in the workout. I'll have to run hard to finish in only 75 minutes or so.

Saturday evening, at 8:00, I'll be glued to the TV for the Penn State-Ohio State football game.