Fantastic (Pointless) Long Run

Last week Monday (8 days ago and 15 days post-TC 10 Mile) I wanted to test my long run fitness. I was pretty sure I was going to do an October 30th half marathon with my wife's marathon buddy, and I wanted to make sure my legs were back. I've noticed this phenomenon where for maybe a month post-race, I feel much more at ease running harder miles. It's like long distance races act like solid training days for upcoming long distance races (once I rest enough and can SAFELY start bringing some effort back).

And that "more at ease running harder miles" phenomenon showed up on that run! Here's what I tweeted later in the day:

A funny thing happened: my wife was home so I knew she could take the boys to school. I woke up and just decided to run early. At the 1.5 mile mark of my run, I realized my phone alarm was going to start going off (BACK AT HOME) in about 20 minutes, and although my wife could have totally just turned it off, I had the guilty reasoning of "I'm out running and I don't want to do anything that would annoy her as she'll be getting the boys ready for school." So I turned my 2.5 mile warm-up into 3 miles by running back home to sneak in and quickly turn off my upcoming alarm (and I got to say hi to Charlie who had just gotten up). And THEN I started my harder "pace" miles. There was something mentally nice about that as I didn't end up as far from home, so I just felt like I hadn't gone that far (enough though I had).

Here were my half-mile splits during the harder part of that run:

3:16, 3:05, 3:14, 3:11, 3:15, 3:11, 3:07, 3:01, 3:00, 3:02, 3:04, 3:01 = 37:31 (6:15.17/mile!)

Mile splits: 6:21, 6:25, 6:26, 6:08, 6:02, 6:05

1:20:36 for 11.78 (6:51 pace overall)

I was soooo ready to sign up for that half marathon based on that run! But then I realized we had a church/school conflict, and even though our priest said we could miss some of these meetings, I sent him a note and he said this was a pretty important one. So I had to scrap the idea of doing a half marathon at the end of the month. Damn.

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Even though I've given up on the idea of racing this weekend, I still went out for a longer long run yesterday as if it would be my last long run pre-race. (Maybe I'll do my own 13.1 race? I dunno.) I wanted to go a bit farther. The 6 miles "at pace" in the middle might have been a bit long, so here's what I ran during that run:

3:24, 3:15, 3:04, 3:07, 3:11, 3:06, 3:07, 3:08, 3:10, 3:14, 3:09, 2:58 = 37:56 (6:19.37/mile at 6 miles, 6:15.62/mile at 6.06 miles).

Mile splits: 6:39, 6:11, 6:17, 6:15, 6:24, 6:07

1:24:08 for 12.15 (6:55 pace overall)

First time cracking 12 miles in YEARS!! It didn't feel AS great as the run the week before, but I have 2 excuses for that: one, I didn't have the thought of a race on the horizon to push me; and two, we just got back from a big trip to the North Shore where I ate crap for 4 days.

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Just to torture myself, I wanted to look back in my training log to around my last half marathon: the 2017 Minneapolis Halloween Half. That year, I ran 1 second faster in the TC 10 Mile (1:01:59 then vs 1:02:00 this year). So you could argue my fitness going into it was similar. But this year, I've had these 2 SOLID long runs (of 11.78 and 12.15 miles) between the TC 10 Mile and what would have been the half marathon. In 2017, I only had one 11.0 mile run, and it was slower than these 2 runs this year: 1:16:49 for 11.0 miles (6:59 pace overall), with 6 pace miles averaging 6:26/mile (with more unimpressive [but at least consistent] mile splits of 6:34, 6:35, 6:26, 6:19, 6:21, and 6:20). And I turned in my 2nd fastest half marathon that year in 1:21:53.

So I truly don't know what I'll do with this "distance fitness" right now. Will I race a fake half marathon to see what I can do? (It's never truly the same as racing a "real" race.) Do I look for a race the following weekend? (Not likely to find one.) Or do I just say "yep, I'm in good shape, but no use 'fake racing' only to possibly injury myself" and just get on with life? I really don't know. Ideas? Stay tuned...