Oh ye (me) of little faith.
Yesterday I had no faith that I would be able to finish today's 20 miler. Everything hurt most of the day yesterday and I just didn't have any confidence that I would be able to gut it out today. I haven't had sore muscles caused by training in a long time but I have actually had some soreness or some extreme fatigue, whatever you want to call it. I guess yesterday's easy recovery 5 miler was a really good decision because once we got started today things began to feel really good. Meg and I were able to find a really good rhythm and just keep it going for the first 15 miles. At mile 15 I decided to pick up the pace to goal marathon pace and see if I could maintain it to the finish. Mission accomplished! The final 5 miles came in at an average of 7:28/mile. I felt like I could have kept up the pace at the end for a while longer, but who knows how long.
I am so glad this training cycle is over. I am really looking forward to cutting back the mileage and hopefully get nice and healed up for the marathon in three weeks. This has been the hardest 3 runnning weeks of my short running life. This weeks mileage is a PR for mileage at 61 miles. Next Saturday I will be running the Valley of Fire half marathon and will most likely just be going out for a nice easy run, not racing.
Time: 2:43 8:09/mile | 