The end of Week 7 called for a long run of 13 miles @ PMP + 15secs/mile, but seeing as though I’m running the Rock’n’Roll Half Marathon next weekend (which just happens to be 13.1 miles), I decided to do a little more this week and cut back next week instead. I hoped to run 18 miles at PMP + 30secs/mile, but would settle for anything over 15. I also decided to try and lower my PMP (Planned Marathon Pace) from 6:48 per mile (based on an 18:00 5k time) to 6:29 which represents a marathon time of 2:50 – a rather ambitious goal I have for the Marine Corps Marathon at the end of October.
You may have noticed there’s no MotionBased GPS information for today’s long run. I changed a few settings before last week’s track workout and forgot to change them back before today’s run. The end result being a GPS file that was too big to upload to the MotionBased server. The Garmin Forerunner 305 has two modes of data recording. The default is “Smart Recording” which picks up key points when you change direction, speed or heart rate. The other option is to record data every second, which creates the most accurate record possible of your data. The main problem with this setting is the size of the file it generates and the limit of 3.5 hours of data that can be stored – great for a short track workout but not ideal for a Sunday morning long run! Oh well, live and learn…
Anyway, today’s run soon turned into a slog through the most humid conditions I’ve experienced all summer. It certainly wasn’t too hot, but the humidity soon drained every ounce of energy from my body. I don’t remember seeing so many people “suffering” on the Cape Henry Trail at First Landing State Park.
I ran 6 miles on the road before hitting the trail. These early miles felt ok, but I could tell the next 9 to 12 miles were going to be tough. The first six mile splits were as follows: 8:03, 7:04, 6:59, 6:52, 7:03, 6:57 – a nice easy warm up mile followed by 5 miles at my “new” PMP pace + 30 seconds. Excellent!
I was hopeful the Liquid Endurance I’d taken over the previous 3 days would help my water retention, but this was the thirstiest I’d been on a long run for many, many months. My sweat rate was ridiculous and it probably looked like I’d been swimming rather than running. I don’t really know how hard I was working either – my heart rate monitor decided today was going to be a good day to chafe my chest, so I decided to take it off and carry it instead.
Despite the conditions, I still managed to record some solid splits: 7:04, 6:57, 7:53 (includes a water stop), 7:02, 7:09, 8:34 (includes a water stop), 7:08, 7:06, 7:03 and 9:08 (includes a water stop), but I must admit the latter miles were a real struggle. I met up with my wife at the end of the trail (who was also finding the going tough), and we decided to take a leisurely 2 mile walk back to the car. It was probably thing the best thing we could have done – it gave us a chance to rehydrate, allowed our bodies to cool and flushed all stiffness out of our legs.
So, another 16 miles in the bank….
Total time (including water stops) 1:56:42 which equates to 7:18 minutes per mile pace. If I take off the 2-4 minutes for stoppages, it would probably be down in the lower 7:00 min/mile range.
One last comment in closing – I’m not sure Liquid Endurance helped at all today. Maybe the conditions were just too crazy to do a proper test, but I’m not that confident about using it at Rock’n’Roll next weekend. Think I’ll stick with Race Day Boost instead….