Log for July 30 – Training for Bank of America Chicago Marathon on October 9th. Goal for the fall and winter marathon season is to break 3:15 for the first time.
Saturday
- 12.8-Mile Marathon Workout – While last Saturday was about running easy and maximizing my time in the aerobic zone over 15-miles, today was about tempo and marathon pace work. We had a very large group that met at Edwin Warner Park this morning for the workout. At 6am, the temps were in the upper 70s with extremely high humidity. However early in the run it started raining, and the temps dropped throughout the workout. Some of the rain showers were quite heavy, which felt awesome. I love running in the rain (except for the squishy shoes)
I knew that today’s workout was going to be tough for 2 reasons: (1) Most of the intervals were scheduled to be done at tempo pace, which is quite a bit faster than marathon pace. (2) My legs were very tired from logging a lot of miles this week, including a hard tempo run on Tuesday and track workout on Thursday.We started with a slow, 15-minute warmup where I only got in about 1.5 miles due to taking a short bathroom break. On a side-note, today I tried to not worry at all about total mileage, but to focus on being consistent throughout all of the intervals.
Following the warmup, we began a series of 4 x 1.25-mile repeats at tempo pace (with approximately 3 min recovery). My goal for the tempo portions was to maintain a 7:00 per mile pace. My legs felt very tired and heavy during the first two intervals, but I was able to do both right around my goal pace. I think some of the sluggishness at first had a lot to do with the really short warmup. I started feeling a lot better during the second two, and even ran the fourth one a little too fast. During the recoveries between intervals I mostly just walked, and didn’t count this mileage on my Garmin.
After the 4 x 1.25-mile tempo intervals, the group did a slow recovery jog for 20 minutes. I took this very easy (9:30 pace), and only ran about 17 minutes so I would have some extra time to re-hydrate and take a gel. Following this, we did a 15-minute interval at marathon pace. My goal marathon pace is 7:26, but for this workout I was shooting to average somewhere around 7:30, and came in just over that. I again walked during the recovery time, and didn’t count this on my Garmin.
The final interval was 2 miles at tempo pace, which I again did right at 7:00 min pace, even though my legs were very tired. Overall this was a really hard, but really good marathon workout (Big thanks to Dan Ashmead for putting together the plan), and I felt good through most of the intervals. I especially felt good about the consistency of the tempo intervals from start to finish.
Some of the folks in the group got in 14 to 15 miles, but I only logged 12.8 due to a shorter warmup, and walking through most of the recoveries. I did this workout in my Nike Vomero’s, and really wish I’d used my Saucony Kinvara’s for two reasons. (1) The lighter shoes would have been nice while doing the tempo intervals (2) The Vomero’s got REALLY heavy in the rain, and I think that Kinvara’s would drain a lot better.
- Cross-Training – Tonight was Yoga. I have a lot of Yoga workouts to choose from and I went with P90X One on One: Fountain of Youth Yoga.