43 days to go …

Last Monday, Scott and I ran our long run. We were scheduled to run 15 miles at marathon pace +15 seconds. This is about 7:45 minutes per mile. The run started out rainy but cleared up and became warm and humid. Scott ended up running 15.7 miles at 7:37 minute per mile pace. I had knee troubles and quit early. I got in 13.5 miles at 7:57 minutes per mile.

On Wednesday this week we ran intervals at the track. The intervals went well, but I needed some pushing from Scott.

Scott is on vacation starting today. Brian and I decided to run our 20 mile log run tomorrow. However, it has been raining a lot this week and the trail may be flooded. I may try to take a casual bike ride on the trail and see if we can run on it. I’m hitting the pillow early tonight, icing and hydrating all day today. I will have a good run tomorrow.

May plan for tomorrow is to run 8:00 mpm for the first 5 miles, then drop to 7:50s for the next 5 miles, then 7:40s for the next, and then end up running 7:30s for the last 5 miles. I think I have been starting out my runs too fast and burning out. The last successfull 20 miles I ran a couple months ago followed this same plan and it went well. The goal is to run an average of 7:45 mpm. The last 20 miler that went well was 7:57 mpm. So I am dropping 12 seconds per miles average.