Walking An Extra 4 Miles...

....So you can lactate with the wind at your back.

The run on today's menu was 12 miles with 7 miles at a lactate threshold pace (7:40-8:00 min/miles for us). Terrifying you ask? Absolutely!

I was not looking forward to this run and after the warm up with legs still sore and angry from running in bad shoes yesterday, I wasn't feeling any more confident. But ok, stretched out the sore shins for the third or fouth time and finished the last half mile of the warm up and started speeding up.

I immediatly noticed how strong the wind was at my back. Chalk it up to the looks on the oncoming runners face, the look of, "oh please. please, please kill me know and make the pain and torture stop", or the look of the bikers who couldn't actually look straight ahead and had their heads skewed in my direction, or the fact that with every step I took I flew a little bit in the air or the fact that the sand that was blowing on the backs of my legs was actually painful.

We decided to go a bit farther away from our apartment because we didn't want to do too many of these important speedy miles into the wind. Of course doing this has your full 12 mile run ending 4 miles away from your apartment, but totally worth it....because....

WE ROCKED THIS WORKOUT!!! Garmin was a little crabby for a few miles but :

Our splits were :

1. 7:53
2. 7:53
3. 7:38
4. 7:13*
5. 7:58
6. 7:55
7. 9:57**

*This mile might have been slightly short because we lost the signal as we went under a bridge, but gained it back right away
**This mile was about 0.3 miles too LONG. I was noticing where we were on the garmin at each mile marker. The mile before the last one garmin said 8.80 miles and the mile marker was 8.5. When we got to the 7.5 mile marker you would think that garmin would be some where close to 9.80 miles....um no it was at 9.5. So if you take that into account this was probably about 1.25 miles and so something like 8 minute miles which is SPECTACULAR as we were directly into this horrible horrible wind.

(are we noticing the colors.....DA BEARS start next weekend!!!!)

We slowly slowly slowly ran/walked the last two miles of the scheduled 12 miles....and then stretched a bit and the walked another 4 miles home where we talked about what we want to be when we grow up (Dad you'll love the new plan!)

I am really proud of the effort and outcome of this run. And the best part : NO MORE LACTATE THRESHOLD RUNS!!!

Tomorrow is a day off and then 12 Friday, 5 Saturday and 20 on Sunday. We found out that we can get into our new apartment tomorrow night which is so exciting so stay tuned for pictures!