W5D7

The long run fell to Sunday this week due to the 5K yesterday. Before I left I deleted some music and added some new stuff to the ipod and charged the thing up to make sure I got through the nearly 3 hours of running I was anticipating. When I started running I hit play button and the first song up was "Hit the Ground Running". This is the same song that came up first on my last long run two weeks ago. What a bizarre coincidence. I couldn't have planned that if I tried.

I headed over to the San Gabriel River Trail but this time I ran from the spill way of the dam, near mile 29.5, south to mile marker 21.5 and back. I'd had covered this ground just last weekend on the bike trip to the beach.

I had given myself the expectation of no less than 10:00 miles but I never checked my watch. I hit the chrono when I started and never looked at it again until I got back to where I started. Although I've dismissed walking breaks for nearly all my runs, I used a 6:1 run:walk ratio for this one. I drank 14 of the 21 ounces of fluid I brought with me, which is pretty good for me. I'm notoriously bad about keeping up my fluid intake. I took half a strawberry banana gel at mile 8 and the other half at mile 11, something else I'm not very good at.

My final time for the 16 miles was 2:41, almost smack dab on my preset target. I ended the week with 36.6 miles.

I read the July 2009 Runner's World magazine yesterday. I'm using the Marathon Challenge plan published there on page 57. I'm actually using the same plan from Yasso's book "My Life on the Run". I just finished Week 7 of the plan although I jumped in late so I'm at my Week 5.

Next week begins Hill Repeats. That freaks me out a bit. I love running hills, but finding the hill of the predetermined distance is stressful. I'll figure it out somehow.

Off to week 6 (or 8 depending on how you're counting).