Marathon Training – Week 11 – Mental math

16/04	-	Rest day
17/04	7.0 miles	Tempo run: 5 miles @ 9:08/9:02/9:07/8:57/9:06 min/mile
18/04	XT	1250 yards swimming, IM softball game
19/04	8.0 miles	Easy run: avg 10:06 min/mile
20/04	-	Rest day
21/04	16.1 miles	Long run: avg 10:32 min/mile
22/04	3.0 miles	Recovery run: avg 10:17 min/mile
Total	34.1 miles	YTD: 376.2 miles

This past week went much better than the one before. Taking both Sunday and Monday off really helped my legs recover from the 20 miler. On Tuesday I had a tempo run on the schedule. After the way my 20 miler went I decided I needed to do this run conservatively. Instead of monitoring my pace I just told myself to run the tempo miles “comfortably hard.” In the end this worked out to an average of 11 seconds per mile slower than the pace my training program would have dictated. I was quite relieved to finish the workout and discover that my legs were not permanently destroyed!

I did a 16 mile long run on Saturday on a fairly flat course. My legs held up pretty well. I certainly felt them towards the end of the run but it was sort of a steady state discomfort that didn’t really affect my pace too much. The real challenge of this run was mental math. I started by running x miles down to a local trail. I then followed the trail west to it’s end and turned around and ran back to where I’d originally joined the trail. By this time I’d run a total of y miles. At that point I had to figure out how many z miles to run out and back so that I’d finish at home with a total distance of 16 miles. In other words I had to calculate z = (16 – x – y )/2, keep running and then turn around when my Garmin read y+z/2 and head home. It took me a full quarter mile to do that calculation! In my defence, none of x, y, z were integers.

There are now 5 weeks until the marathon. I am starting to think seriously about race day logistics and wardrobe. This past week I was obsessed with footwear. I currently have two pairs of running shoes that I use in rotation: a pair of Asics Gel-Kayano XII with 230 miles on them and a pair of Brooks Adrenaline GTS6 with 214 miles on them. I’ve had the Asics since the fall and they’re OK but I don’t love them. I do love my Brooks though and I use them for all my long runs. This is actually my second pair of GTS6s, I wore the first pair during my half marathon last fall and then retired them in January with probably about 400 miles on them. I don’t feel I should use my current pair for the marathon though because by the time I toe the line they could have nearly 300 miles on them. So last week I ordered another pair and I’ll be spending the next few weeks gradually breaking them in. I wore them today for the first time on an easy 3 mile recovery run. They felt great. I’m just not sure how many miles I want to have in them before the marathon. I’m thinking about 40-50 miles would be ideal.