Crappy Long Run

Last week's long run was my worst run since I've been back at it. My previous 3 weeks of long runs had only been getting better/faster, but that went down the shitter this past week.

In a post last week, I noted that the middle 5 miles "at pace" in during my long runs had been getting faster over the previous 3 weeks: 33:05, 32:31, and 31:49 (which is 6:37, 6:30, and 6:22 pace).

I bumped my mileage up last week: I hit NINE miles for the first time!!! And I did 6 miles "at pace" in the middle instead of 5. But instead of being in the 6:20s or 6:30s for pace, I average 6:50.8 / mile for those 6 miles. I just never felt great. I've nearly perfectly negative split the pace miles of my previous 3 long runs, but my splits last week were 6:53, 6:52, 6:51, 6:45, 6:53, and 6:46. So not bad in terms of a descend, but just tooooooo slow.

I also "remembered" that I like to wear calf sleeves. I got them out for the first time in a year last week:

Super sexy with the tall white socks over them.

Post run, this is what went in my log:

LONG RUN. Was NOOOOT feeling the middle hard 6 miles, so just went with it. I didn't try to kill myself. Just kept the effort hard-ish even though the pace was slower. (Storm was coming - don't know if that was related. Finished in a downpour with dark skies and streetlights back on.)

Regarding that last bit... I wonder if the changing weather had something to do with my pace being off. Who knows. But the downpour came at the right time, and I was only soaked for the last little bit of my cool down:

A wet selfie once I got back in the house.

So after my legs felt like crap, I told myself I run my next few runs easy. And maybe make it a "bike heavy" week. So that's what I did. More on some MONDO biking (for me) in tomorrow's post.