Two Recent Long Runs

The end of October saw my first treadmill long run of the season because I had bad diarrhea the day before and didn't want to 💩 myself far from home. That was 11 miles in 1:13:35 (6:41 overall pace) with the middle 6 descending in 37:41 (which is an average of 6:16.83 for those faster miles).

The next week contained NO long run because I raced the USATF MN CC 8K Championship (and check out this post for about a dozen photos from that race if you missed it).

So I finally had a more normal long run on November 13. I went a LITTLE farther than normal and did 12.04 miles in 1:21:37 (6:47 overall pace) with the middle 6 faster in 36:39 (which is an average of 6:06.05 for those faster miles). I really kicked it into gear at the turn-around because I did the first 3 faster miles in 18:39, and the last 3 faster miles in 18:00.

Route with half-mile splits shown. Laps 5-17 were the fast ones.

And then I did another pretty normal long run this past week on the 20th: that run was 11.15 miles in 1:16:45 (6:53 overall pace) with the middle 6 faster in 37:44 (which is an average of 6:17.33 for those faster miles).

QUITE similar to the one above. I like my "go to" routes.

This one was a little slower for 2 reasons: first of all, we made 5 rounds of buns in the bread machine the day before only to freeze most as small buns before they rose to pull out to cook on Thanksgiving (but we also made 2 batches to eat then and there, so I was full of carbs). And secondly, my previous 3 workouts before that long run were a faster 32 mile ride, then a decent track workout, and finally a 38 mile bike ride hitting every hill I could. So my legs were a little shot.