LAST LONG RUN!

Yesterday was my 11 mile run, and now it's under 2 weeks until the TC 10 Mile! Before that run, I had 2 thoughts for how the 11 miler could go and what I'd do later this week:

- It would feel good (proving my legs weren't too tired), and therefore I'd run 1 more longer run later this week. (I had mentioned doing a 12 mile this Friday as a possibility.)

OR

- It would feel crappy (my legs would feel overworked from increasing miles over the last month), so I would just start taking it easy to be full rested/recovered for the race in 2 weeks.

But something else happened.

I did a version of a workout that Coach Jen gave me 2 weeks before my sub-60 TC 10 Mile in 2010. I warmed up for 2 miles, did 5 miles hard, and then cooled down for the rest. I figured I'd run around 6:20s or so for the hard miles, and I didn't shy away from the hills (in fact, I purposely planned my hard 5 miles to be on the hilliest sections of River Road). Well, I ran my first hard mile in 6:14 and felt pretty good. The 2nd hard mile had a big hill up under Franklin Ave, and I did that one in 6:08! I always felt pretty good, and my times were decently faster than I figured they'd be! (In fact, I had 4 half-mile splits sub-3:00!) I averaged under 6:06/mile for those hard 5 miles!

So I felt BETTER than I had hoped (which would lead me to want to run another longer run), but it's made me feel like I don't want to overdo it now, so I'll pull back and not do another long run in a few days.

I mentioned to my wife that I might do 10 miles on Friday with Charlie. (She never knew about my previous thoughts of running 12 - she hasn't been reading my blog lately.) She even thought 10 was too much. I looked back again to my training with Coach Jen in 2010, and she had me run "6 x (3 mins hard, 3 mins moderate)" on the Friday 9 days pre-race. That run (with warm up and cool down) was 9.5 miles. Maybe this Friday, I'll run 5 x (3 mins hard, 3 mins moderate) with 1.5 - 2 miles of warm up and cool down to equal around 8-9 miles total.

So, easy run WEDNESDAY, last harder run with Charlie on FRIDAY, and then 2 easy runs next week on WEDNESDAY and FRIDAY before racing on Oct 1st!

Unrelated: here are 2 pics from yesterday:

Ella getting cozy with Henry during some cartoon time.


Charlie went on a ride with me last night, and
he wanted to wear a flashing light on his back "like Mama."