One 20 miler down, two to go

Recovery run of 5 miles on Saturday.

Today, I did the first of three 20 mile long runs that my marathon schedule has planned. Ran down by the waterfront again. My initial plan last night was to do the run around where I live since it was going to be cool and I wouldn't need the cooling effect of the lake. I decided to go down cause I didn't want to miss the chance to see the Dragon Boat World Championships which are taking place today, nor the new waterfront trail that Yumke has been blogging about. The new waterfront trail is pretty neat. I don't know if it's a permanent thing but they've blocked off about a 1.5 mile stretch of road for the trail. The trail used to be a road so they had police officers at each intersection doing point duty to make sure that no motorists decided to mistakenly drive their cars onto the new trail. That was great with one small problem. Most runners will run through the red lights since there's very little traffic. The intersection is at the end of the street and the only traffic across the path are cars trying to get into the parking lots of establishments on the lakefront. I found myself having to stop for the red lights because there were cops there. I don't know if they were going to hand out jaywalking tickets but I didn't want to chance it. I noticed that several other runners were having the same problem as at each red light, there would be a runner jogging in place!

Pace was pretty good. Towards the end, I thought I had a lot left in the tank and decided I would try and do the last 2 miles at LT pace for a fast finish run which I picked up from a Runners World Training Plan. I ended up backing off though cause I didn't think I'd be able to finish it.

I've been recently considering my goal marathon pace as Pftiz has a marathon pace run scheduled for next week. My initial goal was 8min/mile. I think that may be conservative. My secret wish is to be able to do 7:45 since that would result in a 3:23 marathon which is half way between my current PR and 3:10 which is my BQ time. However I think that's a bit too optimistic at this time.

There's a 30km race next weekend and I'm trying to decide whether I should use it to do my marathon pace run. Drawbacks are that it's in the evening and it finishes in the dark. It's a bit pricey at $69 and it's an 18 mile run whereas Pfitz only wants me to do 15 miles w/12 @ marathon pace. It would also require me to rejig my schedule a little to accomodate the fact that it takes place on saturday. Pluses are that I get a technical shirt and water stations and that there are quite a lot of people registered for it so it should be a fun experience.

Week 8 complete. This was my highest milleage week ever at a little over 56 miles. I hope that everyone's long runs (or races) went well!