Monday, July 11, 2011

The longest run

This whole marathon training thing is interesting.

In many ways it reminds me of pregnancy.
Yes, I've spent so much of my adult life pregnant that I end up comparing a freak number of things to pregnancy.
Anyway.
Marathon and pregnancy.
Slowly counting down to and preparing for the main event.
Measuring the time until that big event in weeks.
Most appropriately, everything gets bigger toward the end.
And yes, with 12 weeks left till St George, I pointed out to Aaron that it's just one trimester away!

I'm slowly building towards some big runs.
Obviously the one big 26.2 mile run at the end, but a couple of 20 milers before then as well.  Some days that thought is really exciting, some days I wonder what the heck I was thinking.

So far all of my long runs have been distances I've run previously.  Week 5 had a 13 miler on schedule for the long run.
I set out that morning realizing that the longest I've run previously is 13.1 miles.  The beloved half marathon-my current favorite race distance.  (We'll see if the full marathon replaces that spot.)  Being the person that I am, I just couldn't handle the idea of stopping a tenth of a mile shorter than my previous longest run.
So I had to tack on just a tad bit more.  0.2 more.
13.2 miles.
And boy it felt good.
I ran it in 2:02:22.  Day of the 2's anyone?
(yes I'm a numbers geek)
A full 7 minutes faster than my half marathon PR, I finished this run feeling fabulous and looking forward to my next actual half marathon event so I can smash my PR, and have that happy sub 2:00 finish time.

Next long run:  15 miles this Saturday to wrap up week 7.
Can't wait.

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1 comments:

The Brown Family said...

I totally respect if you're wanting to go solo, but if you're looking for a partner, I could go for 15 on Sat. Let me know.

Nice job on the training. The best is yet to come ;)

Kim