Another long run today, this week was a 17 which I am hoping to alternate with 20's every other week from now until the taper. There was a fairly nice breeze for the first several miles of the run and it seemed to keep the heat down a bit in the early miles. I had planned to try and add in some marathon pace miles (7:28/mile) during this run to see how it would feel to run that pace on tired legs. At mile 7 I said goodbye to Meg and went off with aspirations of going 6-7 miles at MP. Well only made it 3 miles before the fatigue was too much and I just didn't have it in me to continue. Did a U-turn and ran backward to Meg and we ran together until 16 miles when I decided to finish strong with another MP mile. During the mile after the marathon pace miles I did not feel real well, just felt really tired and felt like I may have to just quit. Ended up gutting it out and after that mile started feeling better. It is encouraging to me that my body seemed to get back into a rhythm after feeling so crappy but it's dicouraging that I was only able to manage 3 marathon pace miles. I think I can blame it partly on the past two weeks being very tough training for me with higher mileage and higher intensity than I have done in a long time. Hopefully during the next couple of weeks the body will hold up and adapt to the rigorous training schedule.
Time: 2:24:28 8:29/mile
NB768 400.51 NB768(new) 119.08 Saucony A2 11.9 | 