2x6 = 12 Miles

It's the weekend!!! We have had a busy day, but lots of fun so far. As every other Saturday, I got up to do my long run this morning, even though it wasn't so long since it was a cut-back week.

Last night I had planned to do 4 miles easy, 4 at my new goal marathon pace, and 4 10-15 seconds under goal pace (close to half marathon pace). Well for whatever reason I tossed and turned last night having 2 running related nightmares: 1 involving a missed alarm clock, and another that included a creepy follower. Needless to say I didn't actually need my alarm clock this morning, and spent the entire hour before heading out evaluating my strategy. Since my dream with the creepy follower, it made me nervous to try my new route today, so I opted out of the new route until next weekend.

Since I changed my route plans I knew I would be taking a small break at mile 6 for a gummi snack and water refill so I decided to break it into two 6 mile runs, and only focus on that 6 miles only. Since I did that I opted to change my pace strategy to 4m easy, 2M half marathon pace for the first and then 4m goal marathon pace, 2 m half marathon pace. This run was challenging in a good way, since I knew the distance was no trouble I wanted to focus all on pace today, and that is what I did.

12 Miles- 1:52:49, 9:24 avg pace, 172 avg HR
Mile 1-  9:53
Mile 2-  9:45
Mile 3-  9:40
Mile 4-  9:32
Mile 5-  9:11
Mile 6-  9:08
Mile 7-  9:29
Mile 8-  9:26
Mile 9-  9:22
Mile 10- 9:16
Mile 11- 9:07
Mile 12- 9:01

After last week with 9 miles at/under my original goal pace of 9:40 I decided that I should be shooting for goal pace miles at/under 9:30 and my half marathon pace at 9:09. So I had 4 easy miles that were much faster than my normal easy miles which I liked, I hit 4 under my goal pace, and 4 at half marathon pace, so I was super happy since all I wanted to do today was run fast!

I finished feeling spent, but it left me feeling really good about all my fall races. With 13 weeks still to go, I hope I can builid up my endurance enough at this speed to meet the goals I have in my head. With my first cut-back week behind me now, I am excited for the next few weeks building back up and getting to new places.