10 miles total with 3 threshold pace miles

I did not get a run in on Saturday. It has been getting cooler here in the morning (low 40s) and those pre-sunrise runs are harder to make happen. I had to dig out my running pants for my run on Sunday morning. We still slept in and I left about 7:30. I wanted to get in a few miles at threshold pace again so I went out to Lane Park for my warm up. It is exactly 1 mile around the block there so I did that twice, then a 2.5 min recovery, followed by one more mile, for a total of three mile at threshold pace.

My threshold pace should be about 6:20, although I haven't raced since July 4th, and I haven't done any time trials to gauge my fitness. My first two laps (miles) around Lane Park were 6:11 min each and my last mile (after that 2.5 min recovery) was 5:55. It didn't feel like my HR was up too high (my HR at threshold pace is around 165-170) so maybe I am getting a little fitter. I was pretty well rested too since I only ran once during the work week, which was an easy run. Total distance for the day was 10 miles in 1:11:32 (average pace 7:09). This was a similar workout to September 13, 2008 when I was running 6:20-6:30 pace on my threshold runs.

If I do another workout similar to that one again I will start to add one more mile (with about 1-2 min recovery in between) at the same pace until I am up to 6 or so. That would be a pretty killer workout. Since I only have two weeks until my next race I will probably do some more hills this week, and maybe one more tempo run either next weekend or early next week. Probably only two more quality workouts before race day.

My dad sent me the newspaper from Minnesota after the Twin Cities Marathon. They also run a 10 miler and 5k that day. Olympian Kara Goucher won the 10 miler in a course record 53:15. She was using this race as a tune up for her marathon debut in New York City on November 2nd. Her coach, former NYC and Boston Marathon winner, Alberto Salazar, who had a heart attack last year and a defibrillator placement, ran the 10 miler as well in 1:08 and change!