Notes
Well, 22 miles, longest run ever, with quality. Check it off the list.
It wasn't easy, but it happened. Shout out to Becky and Chris for tag-teaming a bike ride so that I had company for the entirety of the 22 miles. It was a lot better with company, and a lot better because I had somebody to provide a bottle so I could practice fueling, especially during the harder portions.
Overall I think I'm happy with the effort, though of course there are things I wish would have gone better, especially because this was my last really long effort before the marathon. I'm now less than 3 weeks out, people.
The goal for the quality/workout portion was 2x 6 miles @ marathon pace, with a mile easy jog in-between. In other words, I was hoping 12 miles of my 22 mile run would be at marathon pace.
I had also talked with Anders and we discussed having on the table the option to split the 2nd, 6 mile piece up into 2 separate 3 mile pieces, if that seemed more appropriate.
I ran the first 7 miles easy, through Medina and towards the luce line. The pace felt easy, and I was clipping off 7:30's very naturally from the get-go, so I was happy my legs felt chipper even at the end of a pretty big week. (probably a 5 mile day the day before and a spontaneous day off on Friday helped that)
At 7 miles I started my first 6 mile piece at marathon pace. I accomplished that 6 mile piece from miles 7 to 13 on the luce line. (@12 I turned around and finished the last mile of the piece back the other direction)
The pace felt alright, and definitely got hard for miles 5-6. I wasn't quite on marathon pace, but Anders and I had also talked about this possibility, and going more for marathon effort th
an exact pace. I hovered around high 6:50's and low 7:0x for the duration, so it was only about 5-10 seconds slow for each mile, and because it was 25 degrees, I was fighting a brutal headwind, I was in non-racing shoes, and I was on snow on crushed gravel, I think that pace was certainly appropriate for marathon effort.
As mentioned, it definitely got hard for miles 5-6, and I was happy to finish the first piece and get a mile easy jog.
The second 6 mile piece was harder, as is to be expected. Paces were still on, but it felt harder. The first 1-2 miles were alright, but by the beginning of mile 3 I was starting to labor pretty hard and have some significant lactic acid build-up, so I made the decision at that point that I would definitely split up the 6 mile piece into 2 separate 3 mile pieces. I finished up the third mile and hit a good split, but was definitely taxed. I had a one mile easy jog to recover before attempting the last three mile piece, and the first minute of that was spent walking.
The last 3 mile piece didn't go quite as I would have hoped, and that's where a little of disappointment from the workout comes from, but I'm trying not to let it bother me too much, and Anders has helped with that a lot in the 24 hours or so since then. I got about .75 miles into my first mile and started to really feel both my inner R thigh and my outer L glute and medial L hamstring, and by 1.5 in my R inner thigh and L medial hamstring were cramping. At that point I shut down the marathon pace work, stretched a bit, and just ran the last 2.5 miles back to my house to get in the full 22 mile effort. So I intended my last piece to be 3 miles long, and it was only 1.5. However, in a training run, doesn't seem worth it to run through cramps.
As Anders repeated to me last night, this was a REALLY tough workout, and it was supposed to be hard. Iv never really cramped in a workout before, and its a hard mental hurdle to know I cramped during this one, when in 3 weeks I want to run marathon pace for over twice the distance I ran it in this workout. However, I'll be tapered, fueled, more fit, race day magic, etc, so like I said, I'm trying not to let it bother me too much.
Actual workout ended up being 1x 6 miles, 1x 3 miles, 1x, 1.5 miles, with 1 mile easy jog in between each piece.
Splits:
7:04, 6:57, 7:04, 7:03, 7:03, 6:59
6:55, 7:02, 7:05
7:01, 7:48 (cramp- first half was at marathon pace, then I stopped to stretch and the second half started the jog home)
Plan is that this coming week is my last high mileage week, and the goal is 70, before two weeks of tapering.
Likely this week will feel the hardest as far as mileage goes, because its still high, I'v'e got tired legs, and additionally many days throughout the week will feel longer because I don't have a 20-22 mile long run for the weekend, so more of the mileage has to be accomplished on a day-to-day basis.
Still have a decent number of good workouts left over the next 3 weeks, and hopefully that quality will continue to help my legs feel good at fast paces and make me sharp for race day.