Notes
Alright. That is more like it. No question what's going on here. In one word, weather. Definitely makes me feel a bit more confident. I'm not all the way back to where I want to be, but this was way encouraging. I purposely did the same run as last Sunday where I totally bonked. I haven't checked, but I believe that my average HR was similar for that run even though I was so much slower. I probably went a bit too hard here, but I was excited to keep it under 8 minute pace for the remainder of the fast portion. Using that cool feature where you can change the split distance, I averaged 7:55 for the last 8 miles before the cool down mile. Although I was pushing pretty hard at the end I was still feeling pretty strong as compared to how badly I was fading last week. I don't know if I could have kept it up for 3 more miles for a fast finish 20 miler, but its possible. If I had to start tapering now and this was my last workout, I would probable go for 8:10 pace for the marathon. But I still have 4 more weeks to improve before then and one more fast finish 20 miler in 2 weeks.
I wanted to add that I had 2 GUs at mile 5 and 10 and that seemed to work out well. Because of the low temps, I still had about a quarter of my water left as well. Love the fall!