Notes
This was kind of what I wanted to do. The run started out wonderful. Because of the cool weather, I was constantly looking at my Garmin and slowing my pace. At mile 7 I felt so good and was cruising along at 8:2X when I realized I need to slow it up. The workout called for a normal Pfitz long run as opposed to a fast finish which means the first half at marathon pace + 20% and then speed up to +10%. Problem is I don't know what my marathon pace will be versus the kind of shape I'm in now. I figured 8 minutes is about right but that makes the paces so slow for a long run. Start at 9:36 pace and then speed up to 8:48? I've never gone that slow for a long run except when I was doing MAF training. So I started in the low 9s and then decided I would make every mile a little faster than the last. An easy progression of sorts. Only problem with doing this is that on some of the miles, they were a bit quicker than I was looking for, and it created a cumulative effect where I was already at 8:30 pace with 6 miles. Now normally that pace is alright, but once I hit the 8:20s it wasn't an easy long run anymore. It wasn't quite a fast finish either which kind of left it no man's land in terms of pace. In addition to this, I did not have my HR still which just left me annoyed because I wasn't sure how hard of an effort it turned out to be.
On the plus side to all of this, my knee seems to be about the same and this is the farthest I've gone since my 50 in May and also most miles per week since then at 40. I do think my fitness is coming back. I'm just impatient :)