A Little More Like It

My last few posts about training have been whining about how my pace sucks, my endurance sucks, and my general ability to run sucks. So tonight, although it was only four miles (3.8 actually), things went a lot better. For one thing, it was a lot cooler today, and I took advantage of it to run on a cross training day. I can cross train tomorrow or Wednesday, I figure.

So how did I do better? For one think, I stuck to my intervals. I didn't cheat by skipping a run interval or by walking longer. Even a few times when I was tired, when my watch beeped at me, I would start running.

For another thing, my pace was better. My last couple of long runs (8 and 10 miles) were at an average run - walk pace of about 13 minutes a mile. Today was at 10.4 minutes per mile (3.8 miles in 39 minutes and 32 seconds), and to achieve that, I had to run a lot of it, and keep my pace up. I ran holding a new DeLorme (hiking) GPS that I am beta testing. It has a hard time getting the speed (it was showing running speeds of 5.0 to 9.0 mph even though my pace was fairly steady) exactly right, because it is not designed for runners. But it does measure distance extremely accurately, and in one of my 4.5 minute run intervals, I traveled more than a half mile. So my running pace was at least some of the time better than a 9 minute mile.

Even the garden snail that normally keeps up with me was impressed. I heard him whisper to a turtle "Man, look at that guy run!" as I lumbered past them. So while I am sure I will have future crummy workouts, tonight's was pretty good and I am happy with it. To make my time goal of under 2 hours and 30 minutes means averaging less than 11.4 minutes per mile, including any water breaks and bathroom breaks (the porta-john lines can be murder). So this qualifies. I just need to keep it up for 13.1 miles rather than 3.8. But it is a start.