Thursday night I ran seven miles after work — my longest weeknight run to date for this marathon training cycle.
(Is it weird that while I was training for my first marathon, I pretty much freaked out about it for 18 weeks, but this time I kinda forget I’m training for a marathon?)
My sub-4:00 plan calls for me to do one run every other week at marathon pace, which I had determined several weeks ago would be 9:05 min/mi — that’s for a 3:57:59 marathon.
But I keep running… uhh… faster.
I always think during these “pace” runs that I should slow down, but then I feel like I’m not actually getting a workout, so I settle into a consistent, comfortable-but-fast-ish (for me) pace.
Am I sabotaging myself here? Should I be slowing down? Or should I set a bigger goal for my marathon time?
I’m doing my long runs pretty consistently at 9:15 average pace, so if my faster runs are about 8:45 average pace, maybe I can make those meet in the middle for a 9:00 min/mi marathon (that’s a finish time of 3:55:48, ooh-la-la).
I can’t overthink it! All I know is that I’m feeling super-strong and confident about Rock ‘n’ Roll Seattle.
Oh, just kidding, here’s the elevation chart:
Nope, nope, confidence. Gotta have confidence.
That’s better!
Aaron and I got up to some hijinks at a local park tonight (to be explained soon) and I pulled this majestic pose as a joke, but I actually quite like the photo. Heh!
I’ve got 14 miles to run in the morning. Time for bed!