Today was my 7th long run in training toward a race goal. This originally started as a reluctant agreement to run the Hampton Beach Half Marathon with a friend of mine and has turned into this. A chance to do something few have attempted and a chance to, with the help of friends and family, to make a difference with such a great cause.
Today's long run was an attempt to work on some strategy. One of the things I've been doing is coming out of the gate too fast and I spend the rest of my long runs recovering and feeling like I'm struggling the whole way. I don't have my new GPS watch yet, so I was just timing the overall run, but I was very deliberate in my first mile and a half plus to run at a very slow pace almost 9.5 plus minutes to give my body time to warm up and get into a groove. This was a major change from last week where my first mile was at about an 8:30 pace.
One of the big pick ups from my reading about running this week is that even world class marathoners only run about 15 to 20% of their miles per week max at race pace. Since my goal at this point is to run at a under 4 hours my race pace is going to be just under 9 mines a mile. So my long runs should be at about a 9:20 to 9:30 pace with a focus on just adding miles on these days. With my deliberate slow start, I felt very good through the whole run with only a little bit of knee flare up and muscle cramping but nothing major at all. I felt so good that I kicked it up into a higher gear with about a mile plus to go and finished very string with a total 11 mile pace of under 9 minutes a mile. I still have a lot of learning and a long way to go to get through the half marathon in February and the Boston rave in April but I feel good and strong and am excited about the future.
Now I need to spend some time getting my fund raising campaign up and running to reach my goal.
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