Marathon Pace Run (Lufkin)

Among the tougher things to do when training for a marathon (or for any other race, for that matter) is to do workouts when you're essentially "on vacation," out of your normal home routine and running routes. At least that's the case for me. We're in Lufkin for a couple of days, seeing both of our families, and there's important workouts on the Gazelles Schedule that I really should do. Fortunately, with the GPS watch, I don't have to worry about measuring the routes, but I do have to figure out where to go a little bit, just to make sure I've got enough real estate to cover the planned 8, 9 or 10 miles of a given workout.

This morning, I left my parents' house at about 9:30 am, on a cool sunny day (maybe mid-50's), for a marathon pace run. Gilbert wanted us to take it a little easier on this one, so no 10 mile Progressive run or 8 Mile Pace run. I chose to do a 20/50/20 pace run, with easy 20 minute warmup and cooldown, and 50 minutes of "run as you feel" pace in the middle. I would try not to look at the GPS pace while doing this, instead relying on HR for my pacing.

I took off and cruised through my old neighborhood for the first 20 minutes, crossing the loop towards town before finishing the warmup section. I covered about 2.2 miles for warmup, and I stayed in a decent lower HR range. Average pace about 9:20/mile. I passed some old friend's houses and generally had fun reminiscing as I ran. I felt pretty good after the warmup, and started to pick up the pace. (Edit: 2.15 miles, avg 9:18 pace).

The pace section had me touring more of Lufkin, passing by my grandfather's old house, some houses of friends, the old Junior High school, the foundry in town that makes oilfield equipment, my father and grandfather's dental and medical offices, respectively, the hospital, more friend's houses, several churches, and finally my old neighborhood where I lived through 7th grade. Having so much to check out and think about really kept me distracted, and allowed my body to find a pace and just roll with it. It was a nice tour, and I was surprised at some changes, but mostly was comforted that most things stayed the same (except for the people living in the houses in some cases). The 50 minute pace section splits were: 8:24, 8:40, 8:30, 8:35, 8:46, and 8:14 for about .9 miles at the end. I'll calculate average pace later for the pace section, but it looks about right. Running with a HR limit for this section worked well for me today, and it was nice to be able to ignore all the information from the GPS watch while running. Looks like it was about 5.8 miles of pace, somewhere around 8:30/mile average pace. (Edit: 5.86 miles, avg pace 8:30)

The cooldown section, again trying to get back to that super easy HR number, ended up with 1.6 miles at 10:35 and 9:47 pace. I cut the cooldown section a tiny bit short (cut about 3-4 minutes) so I could get cleaned up and meet my father for lunch at Lufkin Barbecue (and it was really good! ).

All in all, 9.6 miles, average pace 9:01/mile. It was a good run, and a fun tour of Lufkin.

Tomorrow is a most challenging workout when you're away from your training partners...3-5 x mile repeats. I've got a plan to do them on a standard stretch of road, back and forth, so that at least the distance will be constant for each repeat. This means no Tour d'Lufkin tomorrow, and I will need to really concentrate to keep my pace up for the repeats.