Notes
-- Garmin Connect Import --
I'm proud of this one, and happy with it.
My goal was to go out and run about 6:30's, ish, and I hoped it would feel somewhat relaxed. Sometime in the future, and I'm not yet sure how distant or near that future is, I'd like to run that pace (and faster), for a marathon. And I believe I can do it.
The splits came and kept coming, and it did feel very relaxed for a half, at least for the first 8-9 miles. So for that reason I am very pleased. Most of my splits were somewhere mid 6:20's ish, and none were 6:30 or above.
It wasn't marathon effort yesterday- it was certainly faster than that. But it still gives me optimism that that will be marathon effort some day.
And it didn't get hard until about 8-9 miles in. Additionally, I'm ecstatic that this race/effort/feeling, whatever came at this point mid training block. To feel like this race went well, on non-tapered legs, and to only have run 55 seconds slower than I did at grandma's in June in what seemed like a more relaxed effort, is exciting to me.
And I'm also very proud of the effort. Miles 10-13 especially, I was on the grind. And I think this is the absolute best long race I've ever run from a mentality/attitude perspective. I pushed the last 3 miles for no other reason that to practice the grind, to make it hard, and to get fitter. At about 9 miles I knew that I would likely make the goals I set for myself for this race, and I committed to just continuing to grind as well as I could. My self-talk was all positive, and I pushed as hard as I could to the line just for the sake of pushing. I also did a good job of practicing shortening my stride, keeping my cadence up, and not lengthening or becoming inefficient when I got tired.
Both physically and mentally, this race was a win for me. And it came at a great time in the training cycle- before launching into another big block of training, and after a Victory 10k that wasn't bad but wasn't good and just sort of happened.
Splits:
6:23, 28, 24, 28, 25, 28, 27, 25, 23, 24, 27, 14, 23