Boston Marathon Training Week 8 Workouts

3/12-Marathon Pace Workout: Today I did 20 miles with the middle 12 at Goal Marathon Pace. It was a little different trying to do a long run like this in the afternoon before work. I spent much of the evening in agony fighting with my tired legs. The course I chose started on Washington Street near Roberts Hill and came back towards town. I then went north on Rt. 120 to Red Water Brook Road. I ran that all the way to Main Street then went east to Union and then down Sullivan Street to the bottom of Airport Hill. It was a good, honest course with lots of undulation. Overall, my pace for the 12 miles was 6:10 which is a bit faster than it should have been. In total it was 12.05 miles in 74:25. I really am not ready to run a marathon at that pace yet. I think on a good day, with fresh legs and in a race I can run closer to 6:20 pace. It is awesome to do these workouts because they really show you a lot about your fitness. Over the next couple weeks I am going to have the ability to hone in on that pace a lot more. For the 15 mile version which I will be doing on 3/25 I think that I will be starting closer to 6:25 pace and cutting the pace down ever so slightly. Ideally, I would like to finish that closer to 6:20 overall pace. Back to chasing miles...only a few weeks left.

3/15-Cruise Intervals: Today's workout was 3 x 2 miles at Tempo pace with a 2:00 recovery jog between each set. I had some mileage to chase so I ended up doing a longer warm-up and cool-down to get 15 miles total on the afternoon. My plan was to run the first set at 89s laps (5:56 pc), the second set at 88s laps (5:52 pc), and the final set at 87s laps (5:48 pc). I gave myself an out and said that I would only cut the pace down if things felt good. I guess I had a good day (for me), because my splits were 11:40 (5:51 & 5:49), 11:31 (5:48 & 5:43), and 11:25 (5:45 & 5:40). Each mile in the workout was progressively faster than the one before it. I felt great the entire time, and it only got really tough during the last mile. It is very encouraging to be hitting good workouts right now. As I see it, I have another week and a half of really hard training before I start thinking about a taper! Here we go!!!