Doing the big nasty today! The first 20 miler of the season and I would say it was a pretty good success. Learned a couple of things that I really need to work on more. I appologize if this is yucky but I had to stay fairly close to home for the first few miles due to needing the facilities twice within the first 10 miles. What the heck! At least I had the sense to stay close to home but......what the heck! I think my mini carb load on Friday night went a l ittle too far and I ended up paying for it today. When I prep for the marathon I will begin carb loading 2-3 days in advance and will not eat like a pig in the process. Other than that minor stick in the spokes everthing seemed to go really well. Took it pretty easy the first 15 miles where we averaged about 8:37/mile. Then Meg started hurting and I wanted to pick up the pace for the last 5 so like a bad husband I left her and decided to see if I could keep the pace under 8:00 to finish off the run. My final 5 splits were as follows: 8:02, 7:56, 7:57, 7:45, 7:28. I wanted to pick that last mile up to marathon pace just to get a feel for marathon pace on tired legs. I was amazed at much easier that pace is becoming. A good sign that the training is working for sure. I was also amazed that I felt so much better during the last 5 miles than the first 15. I can't explain why going faster felt better but it did. Maybe it was the change of stride, pace, effort, whatever but it seemed to really help me feel better and run easier. For the first 20 miler of the year, I am happy. I'm also happy that I am still relatively healthy at this point in the training. Let's just hope it continues. By the way it was a beautiful morning for a run. When we started it was 52 degrees with a 5-10 mph breeze. After about the first two miles there was little to no wind and the morning was perfect. Couldn't have asked for better running weather.
Time: 8:24/mile | 