Long Running on Sunday

Sundays are the days for long runs in our little household. Some folks prefer to shift schedules so that they can run long on Saturdays, but Jason and I have found that we very much like sleeping in on Saturday after our long commuting week and so stick with the schedule as it's laid out in Pfitz...which is good because I tend to be very much, "We have to do the runs exactly (!) when and how it says otherwise we won't even finish the marathon let alone get our time goal" A little dramatic perhaps....but this is Leah and those of you that know her know that she can be a little on the dramatic side from time to time.

Saturday we went to see Knocked Up with the lovely Lisa and her husband Evin and let me tell you.....I loved it and can't wait for it to come out on DVD. Highly recommended from this crew. On the way home we realized there was a mix up with some cars that were needed for the following day and thus realized that we were going to have to add in some biking on Sunday morning to get to the train station so we could get to our friends house out in Brookfield for a lunch that we were having.

So we decided to get up even earlier that originally planned and set our alarm for 5am. We went to bed early and were up and on it by 5:20. I had a minor freak out because I did snooze until 5:18 and so when I saw the clock I screamed, "JASON IT'S 5:20...WE HAVE TO GET UP NOW!!!" of course it wasn't a big deal at all as we just wanted to get out of the house and running by 6am. Which we beat as we were running by about 5:50.

Compared to our recovery run on Saturday in blinding 90 degree heat (right...our recovery run was 5 miles coming in at 47:30 or 9:30 min/mile) the 75 degrees felt nice and cool. I am still having problems pacing the long runs. I know I need to slow down but I get into a rhythm that feels comfortable and I end up running some fast sub 8:30 miles. We were up and down a bit, at one point the Garmin freaked out but luckily it was at a water stop, so we turned it off and back on again and got it back on track. The 1/2 mile before and after this were at exactly the same pace which I thought was good. We stopped for water as mentioned above around mile 4.5, then again at about 6.75 and splitting a bag of SportBeans (we again forgot to pick up some Gus :-( ) and then at about 8.75).

We averaged 8:50 min/mile and the run was broken up as follows :

So the problem I have is not the spikes as that is probably where we stopped for water, but rather the large dips, like on miles 3, 4,11 &12. And moreso the first two. I don't mind having my last mile be at or around marathon race pace because I like to remind my legs what that's going to feel like. But I would really like to find some consistency with the mid miles and try and keep things around 9 minute miles. Something to try next week.

After the run we both took an ice bath, quickly showered then it was on our bikes to get downtown to catch the 10:30 train to Brookfield. I was initially really worried about adding in the biking but it ended up being a nice ride (very slow) and relaxing and felt good on my legs. We also walked from the station to the house in Brookfield...all added up we did 7 miles of biking (there and back) and about 2 miles of walking. Can you say, "Hello Cardio!"

Tomorrow is my most dreaded workout of marathon training season. The lactate threshold run. It's 8 miles with 4 at LT pace. I am going to try for a 7:30ish on those LT miles. I think I get myself very worked up for these runs and if I would just laugh and have fun with them they wouldn't be so bad. So if you see two people burning down the lakefront path with their speed tomorrow evening it's probably Jason and I. If you also see one of them crying because one mile was off pace, it probably really was Jason and I :-).

Going for 40 miles this week and just for fun this is how we have been doing since the beginning of the year. Notice when I gave up on training for a spring marathon. I do like how the distance has been growing consistently since about the beginning of April with no huge jumps in weekly mileage.


Happy Monday!