Last HARD Long Run Pre-TC 10 Mile!

Whew. Got that run in the bag. This morning, I did my last hard and long run before the TC 10 Mile in nearly 2 weeks. I haven't had any great long runs recently, which was sort of the reason for doing the Square Lake Triathlon 8 days ago - I figured I'd try to break up my "normal" training with a random "speed" day.

My run this morning started slow. I felt sluggish and crappy as I was supposed to be upping my pace. After a 2.5 mile warm-up, I was going to do 6 "pace miles." And they did NOT start well: my first 2 half-mile splits "at pace" were 3:26 and 3:19. I wanted to get them down around 6:10 or less, so this was not a great start. But the next mile kept getting faster which showed promise: 3:11 and then a solid 3:03!

My goal for my middle miles was to just keep it strong. I was going for TIME over EFFORT: I feel like sometimes I run at around 90-95% pace and then my splits are whatever they are. Over these miles, I wanted to keep them sub-3:10 (for half-mile splits) even if it felt a little too hard. And I succeeded: my next 2 miles had half-mile splits of 3:09, 3:08, 3:07, and 3:04!

At this point, I wanted to just finish these 6 "at pace" miles strong. I dind't want to "save too much for the end," so I kept the pace up. And the last 2 miles went well: 3:08, 3:08, 3:03, and 3:05.

So my mile splits of my "at pace" miles were 6:45, 6:14, 6:17, 6:11, 6:16, and 6:08 = 38:58 for 6 miles, or 6:19.67/mile pace!

After 3+ miles of cooling down, I had over 12 miles on the day:

Out-and-back with the harder 6 miles on the west side of the river.


I couldn't capture it while running, but the fog at my turn-around was amazing.
Here's the view from the Franklin Ave Bridge after finishing my harder miles.


"Layers" of trees being covered by slowly drifting fog.


Looking across to Minneapolis about a 1/2 mile south of the Lake/Marshall Bridge.
It should be only about 2 blocks before seeing more trees, but it's all fog.
(The dark stripe in the middle is the trees on the MPLS side.)


My Garmin told me it was my longest run since getting it. I've had a lot in the mid-11s, and
only 2 just over 12 miles. (I didn't know that at the time - had to look back in my log.)


Odd pace: starting... uhh... "randomly" (?) for my first 3 harder miles, then being
more consistent after the turn-around. 2.5 mile WU, 6 miles harder, 3+ mile CD.

My "at pace" miles averaged 6:19.7 as I noted above, and that's the best pace for a long run with 6 pace miles since APRIL. I've pretty much not felt amazing on every long run since then. I've had runs with a faster average, but they've been 4-5 miles "at pace." Since April, I've only had 1 other long run going BARELY under 6:20/mile for those 6 "pace" miles. (When in April, I had some amazing long runs, including one with 6.5 pace miles at 6:08 pace, and another 2 with 6 pace miles sub-6:20.)

I wonder if I was just saying "well, I don't want to go TOO hard..." to myself during at least some of these not-as-great summer long runs. So I need to work on really pushing that pace on my long runs if that's truly my goal.

Alright, time to think about 1 final not-super-killer speed workout this Friday (maybe?...), and then it's all about being fresh for the race in 13 days! Thoughts on my goals to come...