Notes
COMMENTS: I put down long run but this could easily go under tempo. Met at Springbrook prairie with pat, bryan, connor, and brian. started run along the south side of the prairie (firestation) then turning north. met chris derrick along that way, he joined us. ran up to bobaks, at about 720/730 pace. Eventually, pace started picking up as we entered into downtown naperville. about a mile before we turned around, pace began to be 640. When we turned around, pace dropped to 630/620, and stayed that way. Connor fell off very soon after, and brian pat chris bryan and myself packed up. pat fell off shortly after washington because the stopped killed him as he later told me. It certainly threw my stride off for a while. I somewhat knew I was heading for disaster by going the same pace as my tempo yesterday in the middle of a very long run, but I wanted to see what I could do. Besides, it felt good to be running like that. However, the combination of doing more than a marathon distance combined with up tempo speed over the last two days caught up to me on the hills on the prairie. Without being too melodramatic, the destroyed me. I fell of the pace almost immediately, and continued going 645 - 7 for a little while, before slowing down gradually to 720. However, this was no ordinary 720 pace. My legs felt as if they had just completed a sprint. It happened so quickly I couldn't believe it. It seemed as though I just hit a wall... haven't felt that leg dead ever. Only thing comparable would be post-hill at conference or 400m workout where I ran out of glycogen. It was possibly worse than those though, but my memory of conference probably makes it seem easier than it was. Either way, I breathed furiously to try to get my legs back into life, but within a mile I could no longer see the other 3 in the dark ahead of me. Finished up the run and met pat and connor who took a shortcut through the service trail.
Overall, this was a fantastic run. I enjoy the feeling afterwards of having found myself a limit and knowing that I will (hopefully) soon push that limit back. The parts of this run where I felt good were great, and the end was awful. But I know if I had simply gone a usual long-run pace I wouldn't have had any trouble finishing. I've found out that I am in better shape than I had imagined. I also stuck with chris, brian and bryan much longer than I had hoped to do, which makes me feel happy. I've put my body through a lot of stress the last week, but its handled it really well. I know because I listened to it closely, making sure I didn't feel any surprising pains, etc. I also am amazed to see how Pat has improved as a runner... for a while he was going faster than his freshman year PR in the middle of a long run. Incredibly impressive... and it will only continue to get better. Overall, I liked this run a great deal. I taught me many things... like my overall aerobic state and where my aerobic/anaerobic threshold is. One my best runs?-- maybe.