The BoormanBlog

I made sure to get up very early this morning so I could go running. Had a bit of a run in with some large flying insects at mile 3 who just kept buzzing around my head and would not stop, even as a flailed my arms around my head as I ran. I knew I couldn’t keep that up on the way out, let alone on my way back, so I doubled back and changed my route to an open road. Much better than the paved trails deep in the woods.

This long run called for “Pace Plus” which means running 20 to 50 seconds slower per mile than your planned marathon pace. I chose the 50. As it turned out, my 10 minute mile pace is much more of a challenge this year than last thanks to the extra weight from the off season. Plus I was carrying another 5 pounds of water on my back. As a result, I didn’t have to struggle to run at a 10:50 pace. Well, actually I did, but I was struggling to keep up!

In the end, I ran at an 11 minute mile. Not too bad for a long run. This was my longest run of the year, beating out the half marathon I did on June 1. This time I made sure to walk a bit after the run and do a little stretching as part of a cool down. After a nice hot shower, I made myself a protein shake. Much better for recovery than my usual Red Bull or a Starbucks (although I admit I’m drinking some Starbucks right now)

I’m slowly but surely coming back. Hopefully the protein shake will help me recover and I can do some cross training tomorrow.

Stay tuned folks. I’ll keep you posted. Cool runnings!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 10:11 am and is filed under Marathon Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.