W9D4

"You've got to roll with it, baby" - Steve Winwood

This has happened in quite a while, but tonight's planned run didn't go quite as planned. The plan was another 10 miler with 8 miles at marathon pace. I did this same workout last week on Tuesday, 3 days after my successful 18 miler. I've got the 20 miler looming out there on Saturday so I thought about flopping this week's schedule around and doing the 10 miler on Tuesday and the easy 4 today. But thinking back to the weekend with the decreased miles and leisurely pace of the half marathon I figured I'd stick to the schedule as written.

Where I jump onto the river trail is just about midway of the run. I go 2.5 miles out and back one way and 2.5 miles out and back the other. Because its not quite half way my warm up mile was only about 3/4 of a mile. Off I went. My goal pace was 9:00 miles, just like last week.

Mile 1 ticked off in 9:06, 2 and 3 were 8:43 and 8:48. It was still early on but man I was tired. My legs had no energy and my arms were sore. Mile 4 was 8:57. Mile 5 and things deteriorated badly. I took two walk breaks during that mile and it took a lot to eke out another 8:57 mile.

At that point I decided to shut it down. I did two more miles of cool down, one at 10:02 and the last at 9:16 (so there was still something left) and then the last quarter of a mile or so to finish off the 8 mile run in 1:13:37.

I'm not really sure what caused the melt down. I may have been the heat. The schedule may have just caught up with me. It might have been the donut and chocolate chip cookie I had a work today.

I will take advantage of Friday's rest day and hopefully be ready to grind out 20 miles on Saturday morning. Roll with it, Baby!