Tuesday evening, the family and I flew to Mississippi to be with my clan for Thanksgiving. There were some delays getting there, but it all worked out just fine. We dragged into bed after midnight, though, and we were all quite tired. Wednesday, I had planned to do another 45 minute recovery run, but various family activities and a good morning's sleep interfered with those plans. The weather chilled down all day long, until by that evening, it had dropped into the 40's. I was thankful for that, since all my running gear was for cool weather.
Thursday morning, though, I got out there around 9:00 am, on a slightly overcast, somewhat breezy morning, temps in the 40's probably. I ran with my vest on, initially, and wore long pants throughout. After the GPS synched up in its new location, I strapped on my water bottle, filled with Accelerade, put an additional water bottle out on the front porch, and headed out for my workout.
The plan was to simulate the 15 x 400m workout that Gilbert had the Gazelles doing on Turkey Day morning. So, I chose to go 20 minutes easy for warmup, then do a fartlek acceleration workout of 15 x 2:00 pace, with 1:00 easy jog rest between each acceleration. Then finish it off with another easy 20 minute of jogging. I guessed I'd go about 8 miles, maybe 8.5 miles.
I did a loop around the rock road by the houses out in the country, and then exited the gate and started exploring. I went down a farm road, and then turned onto an even smaller road, and waited for my warmup period to end. I got pretty far down Kane Road when the warmup period had finished, and started accelerating. The 20 minute warmup time covered a little over 2 miles, about 9:40 pace for that segment. Except for some hilly bits, I stayed in warmup HR range.
With much zigzagging, various loops on the rock road, and a couple of out and back segments up and down the hilly farm roads, I finished up the 45 minutes of fartlek accelerations. I fought off a couple of spots where I tried talking myself out of finishing the workout, around 10-12 repeats, but I just kept clicking them off, and the fartlek section was over soon enough. Those 45 minutes, including the recovery jogging between fartlek intervals, covered about 5.6 miles, at an average overall pace of 7:57/mile, about right, but maybe a little harder than I should have run. Oh, well, for the most part it was invigorating, and I only got chased by two farm dogs, who turned around when I told them to "shoo."
Gratefully, I eased into the 20 minute cooldown, and watched my HR slowly drop back into a happy range. I went just under 2 miles again during the cooldown, at about 10:30/mile pace, and by the time the cooldown was over, I felt really good, warm, and happy. I finished the run by going down to a pond on the farm out there, and it was a beautiful sunny morning by then. I spent some time walking around after the workout, just enjoying the scenery, the quiet, and the fact that I've gotten to the point that I'd spend almost an hour and a half on Thanksgiving morning, on vacation, running a pretty intense workout for an eventual marathon race in February. Without any running partner, or, indeed, much notice from the gathered family.
As much as I enjoyed the solitude of this run and the satisfaction I gained from it, I can't wait to have my long run crew join me on Saturday for the 20 miler. Running that far by myself is something I'm not sure I could do.
Total workout about 9.5 miles, overall average pace, including warmup and cooldown, was 8:50/mile. I've only run a couple of times this week, but they've been good ones! Friday was a travel day back to Texas, and I've carbo-loaded with pasta (pizza at lunch in Hobby airport in Houston), and I'm drinking water hourly. I've got the Accelerade ready for my supplemental fluid replenishment for the 20 miler, my GU, and my pre-run Clif Bar. Ready to go. Just got to get to sleep and wake up at 5:00 am to join my friends.
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