Carlsbad Marathon Week 4

6 recovery - 11/2/15

Nice and easy.  Daylight Savings Time in full effect - totally light outside the entire run!  Wasn't necessarily planning on doing this run in the morning but was awake so what the hell.  Needed some miles to loosen up a bit.  Running by our elementary school ran into my daughter walking to school at like 7am - "What are you doing?"  I asked.  "I have school today" she said.  "Not for another hour!" I said.  10 seconds of thought...  "You forgot to  change my clock back!".  D'oh!  Sure enough we forgot to change our kids' clock's back an hour so here she is ready to school an hour early!  Classic Parental Fail.  I told her to go home, I finished up my run.  And we started over (and yes we immediately changed her and her brother's clock back one hour!).  However was proud of her pulling herself together and getting herself to school 'on time' by herself.  That will come in handy at some point I'm sure.

3x1600m w/600m RI - 11/3/15

Dumb did not turn off 'auto-lap' so a mile would hit right before I finished each 1600 which was/is semi-annoying when looking at the stats.  Fortunately the stats look good!  Under 6:30/mile for each rep which is great.  Felt tired but doable.  Lots of people out on the track which is nice and ran with a friend from work who got some 1200s in.  2 miles to/from the track for warm up/cool down.  I like running on an actual track at UCI - good times.

6 recovery - 11/4/15

This went fine.  Always a bit stiff after a track workout it seems.  At least it was nice and breezy out.  Sped up a bit the last 2 miles once I loosened up to get the blood moving.  All good at 8:25mm.

7 tempo - 11/5/15

The big enchilada.  After last week not being able to get up the final hill in the last half mile really wanted to be sure that I was going to be able to finish properly this week.  Also really want/NEED to start actually running these at marathon pace (~7:38mm) to get a good feel for it.  

Also read an article on runners-someting-or-the-other about what each pace should feel like.  Said for marathon-paced runs I should be able to say a couple sentences without falling over.  

SO with all of that I turned OFF the pace alerts on my garmin and just tried to run 'comfortably hard' at a pace I could say several sentences out loud at.  What would that pace be???  The suspense was killing me so up at 5:30am after a night out & not going to bed until around midnight with a couple drinks in me.  So not the best start.

Started off I knew I was going a bit fast - I resolved to only look at my garmin at each auto-lapped mile.  First mile went by at 7:21ish so kept telling myself to relax.  The pace was comfortably hard I thought.

Second mile went a bit faster as it always does.  At the end of the 3rd mile the big uphill part of my run as over - my 7 tempo last week at this point I was really out of breath and took a 20s stop to gather myself.  Today felt -much- better, although I was out of breath I figured it was because I ran the entire mile uphill and now had about a mile of downhill.

Sure enough I caught my breath on the downhill and felt ok again.  After mile 4 and then 5 I kept talking out loud to ensure I could indeed say some sentences.  That went pretty well I thought.

I was concerned before the run that I didn't remember how badly/out of breath I felt during those previous tempo runs which would be a very clear sign I was going too fast (not to mention my times which were way too fast).  But for this run, monitoring my breathing closely it seemed ok.

The pace was definitely hard but not unreasonably so.

At mile 6 I knew I had a final uphill mile to finish and hoped I would make it.  The real hill starts at 6.5 - going up that last half mile I was very much out of breath but did finish it!  So was very happy about that.

Final pace: 7:00mm wow!  One of the best if not the best tempo run I've had so far.  I was pretty tired at the end - definitely could NOT say a couple sentences but hopefully that's how it's supposed to be at the end going up a steep half-mile hill?

Well this was the end of the 7 mile tempo runs - starting next week I go up to 8 miles.

Really need to stop screwing around and dial in my marathon pace for these runs.  I do not think I could have done another mile at the end of this run UNLESS I didn't have that last half mile uphill - then -maybe-.  Guess we'll find out next week stay tuned!

Been pretty stiff today - looking forward to not getting out of bed until 7am tomorrow and a REST DAY!

REST - 11/6/15

lovely, lovely, rest.  Am sore.

11 long - 11/7/15

HILL MANIA!  Running buddy wanted to do hills so hills it was!  Over 1100' of climbing - was pretty much all up and down including a super-killer hill around mile 3 and another at mile 7.  Was super dead at the top of them but fortunately managed to recover pretty well when going back down or on the flat.  This was a tough run with some awesome views.

11 comfortable - 11/8/15

Wasn't sure what I'd have in the tank for this one but it turned out pretty good.  All on the Carlsbad Marathon course - up the big hill and back down and the 2 mile out-and-back at the bottom of the hill.  Again the second half felt tons better than the first half after I was warmed up - and running downhill!  Was very happy to get this one in the bank.  Am out of town the next 2 weekends so good to get some miles on the actual course.

And that's a wrap for Week 4!  Just under 50 miles for the week.  Legs feeling very tired but the runs are going well - even tho they almost are all TOO FAST!!  The one thing I wanted/needed to avoid.  Next week for the 8 mile tempo WILL slow it down to 7:30+.