Good Week!

Capped off a good week today. 73 miles total.

Today’s workout was an 18 miler, with the last 8 miles at marathon pace. Uff, these are always the TOUGHEST workouts (physically and mentally) to do. Especially doing them alone, so I whined a little bit (too outwardly) as I was going out the door, and as a result, guilted Nate into helping with it.

I start off and do 9 miles, calling it a “warm up”. Nate meets me at the high school for the faster stuff. In the interest of not running ridiculous hills, I’m going to do 4+ loops around a 1.4 mile loop around the high school. It’s as flat as you’ll find in Red Wing.

As I start the first mile, I’m thinking to myself: wow, I’m not going to be able to do all 8 miles. My quads are so sore from the previous week that they feel like marathon legs (where they don’t contract quite right). That clears up a bit after about 2 miles, but my legs still don’t have any snap :(. Workouts like this are so much easier when you’re feeling good & snappy!

Good thing I have Nate there to keep me going. Seriously. I couldn’t do this alone. Poor guy, though — I should really find a training partner that’s my speed. He does about 1/2 the loop with me, and then jogs back to meet me near the start. Him waiting for me not only breaks up the workout, but it keeps me from stopping (seriously, on a 50+ minute hard workout, you have plenty of time to think of reasons you should stop)

Anyway, I plug away, and finished the workout. Yeah!! And not only finished it, but finished it strong! 6:31 mile pace average. I’m pretty pumped about that — last year I did these in 6:50 pace. I thought because this was my first MP workout that I’d be near 6:35 or 6:40.

So, great way to end the week. Now — need to look ahead to next week! Just under 10 weeks to go!