MGP Pace Run

Today was a sort of in-between workout. 10 miles on the trail, 2 miles easy to start, and then 8 miles at our marathon goal pace (MGP). No fast finish, no progressively faster pacing, just find your pace and hang out there for 8 miles. Should feel pretty relaxed. I chose 8:35/mile as MGP, which would be a 3:45 marathon. That's the marathon time predicted thus far by my Distance Challenge races.

I ran with a pack including Brian, Rich and Charlene. For Charlene, this was maybe a little slow, but she stayed with us the whole way, enjoying the relatively easy pace. Alex started with us, but true to his word, he took it easy today and did the 7 mile loop instead. Once the two mile mark passed, Richard went on ahead to test his foot, but our gang stayed together for our run. I checked the pace of the second easy mile, and saw 9:08, so I knew that our MGP was just a click faster than that. We found the pace almost perfectly on the first pace mile, and did a pretty good job of consistent pacing from there to the finish. We had a couple of miles just a touch too fast, some just right, one or two a little slow, but we hit our goal pace, on average. We did not stop for water, mainly since the pace was moderate and the distance fairly short. Good run. Lots of conversation at the relaxed pace, which I take as a good sign that the pace might indeed be my MGP at Freescale. We successfully resisted the temptation to pick it up at the end, and rolled to a stop feeling very good indeed. Gilbert prescribed 10 x 100m striders to finish things off, and so we did those as well.

After a quick stretching session and a few words with Richard and Jason, I left to knock out some Christmas shopping while the crowds were slim. It was a nice workout, and it felt good to hit our goal so comfortably. I'm not sure what that pace would be like for 26.2 miles, but so far, so good.

Splits: 9:16, 9:08 (end of easy running), then 8:32, 8:37, 8:29, 8:21, 8:44, 8:21, 8:28, 8:34, and .2 miles at 8:28. Average on pace miles was 8:31/mile, average for entire 10.2 miles was 8:39/mile.

Now, back out for Christmas shopping!