This was a good run week starting with a 2 miles shakeout
from last weeks 11 mile run, followed by a 5m jaunt with a local running group from
Potomac River Running, then 6, 3, and 11.5 miles. That made for a total of 27 miles, which
while nothing for the serious runners, was a lot of miles for me. As I prep for the Marine Corp Marathon, I
know that I’ll be doing many 30+mile weeks, but I’m just trying to train
carefully and methodically. I don’t want
a repeat of last year.
I enjoyed the 5 mile run with the running group, although I
was not crazy about the route. It
involved having to cross too many roads, and since it was in the evening, there
was a fair amount of traffic. Given the
stores location (on Leesburg Pike in Falls Church) it is kind of hard to avoid traffic
situations. But I enjoyed the run
nonetheless – good people, good pace. I'll run with them again I think.
The next day I did two 3 mile loops around my apartment area;
this is actually a really good work out because very little of is flat. I’m either going up or down, and there is a
very nice uphill finish on each loop, making it great training for the MCM.
During my first loop I was dragging so badly at 2 miles, that I
almost pictured myself just doing 3 miles. So I sucked down a Gu, pretended
like I had someone running with me and we had 6 miles to do, and kept going.
While I know full well that the Gu was a great stimulant for me, I also wonder
how much my mental imagination of running with someone got me over the
hump. I actually had a really good run
that day, averaging a 8:30 pace. I even
clocked a 7:45 split on mile 5 (slight downhill – fun to take advantage of that stretch).
Sunday’s long run was a different story altogether
though. I went back to the C&O Canal
path (6:30AM, 67deg, 95% humidity) with the goal of making it to a hill on the
west side of the Reservoir. That hill is
on the MCM path and hits right around mile 7, so I wanted to experience
it to see how steep and long it might be. I picked a spot to jump on the trail
about 4 miles from the hill, the thought being that I wanted to have some miles
on me before I got to it so that I would be a little tired by the time I got
there and still finish with an 11-12 mile run. It turns out that it’s a good
hill, but not bad at all. And there is a slight downhill grade afterwards
providing some relief – so all good.
In order to get back on the trail I had to run all the way
down MacArthur Blvd to Canal Rd where I found a tunnel that goes under the road
and the canal back to the trail. I’m not
big on tunnels, and it gave me the creeps.
It was well lit, paved, and I could see the other end, but it still gave
me the heeby-geebies… yuk!
The way back was without incident, and I was able to get
into a nice cadence. It felt really
good. I wound up killing some time when
I had to slow to a walk at mile 9 so that I could take off my camelback and get
to a packet of Gu in a difficult to reach pocket, but aside from that I was very steady all the way
through. Notwithstanding, by the time I
got to where my truck was, I was ready to call it “done”. The humidity just
sucked the energy out of me - and I'm sure that the burger and beers the night before did not help... Even though
I had posted 11 ½ miles, and I always prefer to post whole numbers, I did not
have it in me to do another ½ mile. In
retrospect, I should have toughed it out, but I didn’t. Next time.
My average pace was 9min/mile dead on, with which I was very
pleased. If I hadn’t had to walk while
rescuing my last packet of Gu, I would have been able to post a sub 9min/mile
pace! (it is always the little things…).
139 days (20 weeks) to the MCM
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