Pheidippides’s BodyBlog

This morning I headed out to the bike trail at 6:40 a.m., well before sunrise, with the goal of running my longest long run yet — 19 miles.  I beat that by perhaps a half of a mile or so — I’m not exactly sure because I missed the mile marker for 9.5 miles.

I made my goal: about 19.25 miles in 2:50:40.  At the end of it I couldn’t believe I’d been runnig that long.  With the exception of a few 15-20 second drinking fountain stops I ran the whole way.

As usual I started with a 1.5 mile warmup, heading upriver, and a 1.5 mile cooldown over the same path on the way back.  In between ran a main set of 16 plus miles, trying to speed up a bit on the way back.

1.5 warmup: 13.26 min

8.25 miles out:  1:13:22

8.25 miles back:  1:09:09

Last 8 miles of the back segment I ran in 1:06:19, trying to hold an 8:20 pace.  I beat that pace by 21 seconds, for an 8 mile average of about 8:18 min/mile.

1.5 cooldown: 14:42.  When I slowed down my legs really stiffened, and I was barely beating 10 min/mile pace.

Total 16.5 mile time: 2:22:31.  8:38 min/mile pace.
Average pace over whole distance: 8:45 min/mile.  About what I aimed to do.

So with 12 weeks to go to the marathon I’m up to a 19 mile run and able to hold a decent training run pace.  In a few weeks or so I’ll try to get the long run up to 22 miles.  Then I’ll need to incorporate some marathon pace running in my longer runs as well.

19.5 miles is my longest continuous run ever.  Even when I ran long runs in my early twenties I never continuously ran that far.  My legs are a bit sore right now but not too bad.  I’m kicking back now watching the 49ers look completely mediocre against the Seahawks.  Rest is good.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.