7/29

18 for me with 10 @ MP (9:09). I gotta be honest, I was pretty nervous about this run, to the point that I was feeling sick to my stomach until I actually started the MP miles and they were doable. (Well, by the end my legs were trashed and I wanted to stop.) First 4 were at 10:12/mile and I was so mad because I was using the Garmin virtual pacer to hit 10:30 and I was really worried that the too-fast pace would mess me up later. Next 10 were bang on at 9:09, even though the splits were a little ragged individually (9:05, 9:17, 8:55, 9:15, 9:08, 9:10, 9:37 (stopped to stretch my calf), 9:05, 9:10, 8:52). I mostly did a good job routing this around flattish or gently rolling stuff, but at 8.5 in to the 10 at MP (12.5 overall) I ran up a 5% grade from the river bottoms up to campus and it was not pretty. Totally talked myself into pushing it the last mile so that I could hit the MP overall and then I walked for about 3 minutes and ate my granola bar, so the next mile (15) was pretty slow at 11:46 and then I ran semi-normally again and averaged 10:35 for those last 4 miles, including the walking one.

Overall I'm happy with how this run went--I think that the 4-hr marathon is POSSIBLE but it may be a stretch, based on today and how tired my legs were by the end. But I also ran 3 double-digit runs this week, and I haven't even run 2 yet this cycle, so this week was a big jump up for me!

50.3 miles this week and 179.4 for July so far.