Weekly Long Run

Today we went 12 miles and I would say felt "ok" for it. Not great, not bad....just, well, just "just" I guess. I don't know what the problem was, maybe it was being too cocky after our 9 miles on Thursday which went beautifully (I mean really 12 miles is just another 3, it can't be too hard right?) It was pretty warm out though and REAL sunny so that could have slowed us down a bit. In all actuality it didn't really slow us down for what we are suppose to be running for these longer runs...but I had NOTHING in my legs for the last 5 miles...which quickly brings me to...

Do any of you use Gu, Clif Bloks, Sports Beans? If so what flavors do you like? Last summer Jason and I did all of our long runs in the early Sunday morning hours and Fleet Feet had free gatorade stands out along the lake front path so we didn't need to carry anything with us. With our schedule being the way it's going to be for the next month and a half we have to run when the time allows us to run so we won't necessarily be there when Fleet Feet is there. I think you eventually run out of gas only taking in water so it's probably time to start exploring these guys.

We finished the run averaging 9:18 miles. This is almost bang on to what we are supposed to be doing for long runs. I read somewhere in Advanced Marathoning that your long runs shouldn't be too slow, I think it said you should be somewhere between 10-20% slower than you goal marathon pace.....uh oh here comes some math....

Goal Marathon Pace = 8:15 (495 seconds)
Fastest (10% slower than MP) = 495 *0.1 = 49.5s -->8:15+0:49.5 = 9:04.5 min/miles
Slowest (20% slower than MP) = 495 *0.2 = 99.0s -->8:15+1:39 = 9:54 min/miles

So we were exaclty in the range that we wanted to be in, pacing closer towards the faster suggested pace which is nice. I'm actually happy about this and have to remember that all runs don't (AND SHOULDN'T) be done at 8:30 miles...that would defeat the purpose of different workouts for different days. We did have one bad mile with a longer water stop and a bit of walking to get our legs back to wanting to work and ended up finishing strong with Mile 11 in 8:57 and Mile 12 in 8:35 (see the above splits for the full brekdown)

I also think I might have been slightly dehydrated because when we finished I drank water for about 2 minutes without stopping. We got home and did the ice bath thing. It was good again, but I could NOT warm up afterwards. I stood in the hot shower for what felt like forever and was still shivering when I was done. Bad circulation perhaps? Oh well..it'll feel really good on those 110 degree days on my 3rd floor, non-airconditioned apartment.