25 mile weekend!

I had a good mileage weekend. Now I need to maintain this volume over the next 6 weeks.

Saturday I met Clay (who started earlier and was at mile 3 by the time I caught him) on the aqueduct. We went east toward Highland HS, out on the dirt side and back on the asphalt side. We maintained an easy pace on our first loop (8:30/mi) and then increased to his marathon pace (7:30/mi) on the next loop (we repeated the same loop). My splits will be a little different than his because our mile splits were not at the same spots (we didn't start together). Here are my last 7 mile splits: 7:49, 7:38, 7:41, 7:31, 7:29, 7:23, 7:02.

Clay ran 20 and I ran 17. We both felt good about the workout.
My total time for the run was 2:18:32 (avg pace 8:09).

It was a fast finish long run for Clay. This is a great workout for anyone preparing for a race of 10k or more. The progression run or fast finish run allows you to practice running at your goal pace after running for a set amount of time. In this case, Clay and I ran easy for more than an hour and a half and then picked it up to his marathon pace. This will help him run hard late in the race when he is already tired. It is much easier on your body to take the first 2/3 of the workout at an easy pace, and you still get the marathon pace effort benefit. This can be done with any distance. For example, if you were training for a 10k, you could run 8 miles with the first 6 easy and the last two miles at 10k pace. One of my best fast finish workouts was an 18 miler (12 easy and 6 above MP) in preparation for the Boston Marathon in 2008!


Today I did an easy 8 miles and averaged just over 8:00 pace on an out and back route that took me out to the end of Ave. M and on to the dirt roads out there.

Total mileage for the weekend was 25!

Next weekend is the half marathon time trial (1:30) on Saturday morning.