Training Day 16

Today was a good day! The run was a General Aerobic 10 mile run with a planned pace of between 9:30 and 10:30. I ran a route to a place that I had been many times, with not a lot of uphill, but enough to keep me honest. I had the workout broken into 5 segments of 2 miles each. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I like to do this because it not only breaks up the monotony, but it gives me a better indication of my pace that I am currently working on since I have my watch set up to display the pace for the current leg. I find this to be a much more credible reading than trying to find  a current pace that will jump all over the place due to GPS anomalies, and I'm sure a few other reasons.

Coming off the weekend's long run that was only 3 miles longer, I suppose this run could have felt like as much work as that one did. The difference here though was that I wasn't going to get quite up to marathon pace, which for me is around 9 minute miles. The other factor that might have worked its way into the equation was the fact that it was 63 degrees when I started my run...a full 10 degrees cooler than Sunday. I ended up running the 2 mile legs all around the same pace...closer to the fast end of the range, and finished with an overall pace of 9:31. I even had a leg where I lost track of my time and ended up with a 9:23 pace for miles 5 and 6.

If it sounds like I'm obsessed with numbers and paces, you might be on to something. It's this fact that keeps me sort of motivated, but I also know that pace and times aren't the only thing. In fact, I was reading today about running in the summer, and the effects the heat and humidity have on performance, and it was actually encouraging. I'm really hoping for the summer months to help condition me well, and I will be that much more ready for Chicago in October.

While I have never been really "down" about training, there are always some highs and lows. Today was certainly a high for me. I honestly felt like I could run a dozen more miles at the end of the run, and I was tempted to speed my pace during the run, but I am trying to stick to training paces based on my marathon goal pace. Tomorrow is a recovery run, and then I have a much more challenging workout on Thursday. If I had overdone it today, it's likely that I would not be as ready for Thursday, so I had enough discipline to keep my ego in check.

Did I mention that today was a good day?