Two Long Runs: a Shorter One and Longer One

Last week's long run was a bit rough. I had just come off a big bike week and my legs were still feeling it a bit. Instead of my normal 6 miles "at pace" in the middle of the run, I pulled up at 5.5 miles. So it wasn't a ruined long run, but it just wasn't great:

Heartrate building to mile 7.5 (DO NOT believe that
big plateau - my HR did NOT jump 20 bpm at mile 6.5.)


Foot strikes for that run. As always, it's better (around 180) when I run faster.


During my cool-down: that graph is FLAT as those are all
9.1-10.0 mph, with under 4 minutes that are 10.1 mph or faster (circled).

(That graph shows your last 30 minutes across the screen with the height being determined by speed: each segment is x.1 mph to [x+1].0 mph. So like I said, that entire section on the left is flat because that's the section from 9.1 mph up through 10.0 mph.)

That run was 11.0 miles in 1:15:39 (6:53 average overall pace) with 5.5 miles faster in the middle averaging 6:15/mile.

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This week's long run was better. Until about 2 months ago, my "standard" long run had 6 "at pace" miles speeding up from 8.9 mph to 10.0 mph. The last number of weeks have been a bit faster: 9.1 mph up to 10.2 mph. I've been toying with trying to go even faster, but my legs were heavy starting this week's long run after a weekend of eating sh*t. So I started with the "new normal" of 9.1 mph, and was still feeling OK around 10.0 mph. So I figured I'd add on an extra half mile. So I did 6.5 miles "at pace" with the final half mile being 10.3 mph. My final 4 half-mile splits were all under 3:00!

Also with a weird heartrate spike...??


I forgot to snap a pic just after finishing my hard miles, so this is later in my
cool-down, this time with nearly 10 minutes that are 10.1 mph or faster!

This week's run was 12.0 miles in 1:21:59 (6:50 average overall pace) with 6.5 miles faster in the middle averaging 6:11/mile.