Marathon Pace Run

I felt tired this morning, so I put off the pace run until tonight. Started about 6:30 pm, right at dusk. Weather not too bad, maybe 73 degrees, and darker as the run went on, so no sun problems. It cooled off a bit as the run progressed.

The goal for the workout was to get 45 minutes of "As you Feel" comfortable running in the middle of the workout, quicker than long run/slow recovery pace, but not tempo run pace. I interpreted that to mean about 60-70% of max HR, so I set the HR monitor accordingly, to beep at me if I got too frisky during the run. Due to time constraints, I cut the warmup slightly short to 15 minutes instead of 20, and the cooldown was slightly abbreviated, too (18:30 instead of 20:00). 45:00 of pace running was kept intact. The workout was in the 'Hood, on rolling terrain.

Warmup was in easy aerobic zone, about 1.6 miles at 9:05 pace. I felt really good, and began the pace section by accelerating just a bit to get into the HR range, and after that, I didn't look at the watches again until it was time to start the cooldown. I eased back on the few occasions when I popped over the top HR number (on steeper bits), and recovered quickly back into the right range. The 45:00 pace section turned out to be 5.2 miles at 8:38 pace, and it felt very comfortable. HR numbers right on target. The cooldown was longer, 1.9 miles at 9:55 pace. It was a very good workout, right where I was supposed to be, not too hard but not easy, either. Overall, it was 8.7 miles at 9:00 pace, so the whole run was under my former projected marathon goal pace of 9:09/mile. Gilbert won't let me get hung up on a marathon goal pace right now, but as I've said to many people, as long as the clock says 3:xx:xx at Freescale, I'll be ecstatic! That would require 9:09/mile pace. Anything faster would be a bonus.

Some good stretching afterwards, too. Now, do I get up tomorrow early and meet the Gazelles, or do I wait until the afternoon session instead? Hmmmmm... tomorrow is a school holiday, so it might be best to go ahead and muddle through Gazelles World early, so that I have the rest of the day with the kids, and to give my body maximum time to recover before the long trek on Saturday.