Boston Prep 16 Miler

This is one of the hardest road races that I have ever done. I was expecting that it would be difficult, but this was far harder than I thought. My goal for the race was to run this at, or slightly faster than, my marathon pace (7:00 mpm). I did that, barely, covering the 16 mile course in 1:50:50 (6:56 pc). I was not overly happy with my pacing plan, because it was anything but even. In short, I put some time in the bank early on as I was running closer to 6:30 mpm pace. However, I lost all that extra time running uphill between miles 10 through 12. The whole course was riddled with hills, but those three miles were especially challenging. The hills were steep and long. I was just trying to keep it below 8:00 pace up those climbs. The hills sucked all the life out of my legs and the last four miles were extremely hard. I ran the final mile in 6:45 and I don't think I could have run that 1 second faster. Overall, I got 18 miles in for the day. It was a great workout and it will pay off huge as this training program continues to progress.