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April 09, 2006

The "Magic Number"

In both of my marathon training cycles, I've had a "magic number" - the number that makes me freak out when I see runs bigger than it on my calendar. Last time, it was 10 miles, and I wound up running the Chicago Distance Classic instead of the scheduled 12 miles to help me get over it. From that point on, nothing else - not even the 20 miler - freaked me out as much, because I knew if I could run 10+, I could do anything. This time, the magic number was 15 miles. I was OK with the 10-12 mile runs. I was OK with the half. But today's 16-mile fast-finish long run has been weighing heavily on my mind and stressing me out all week long. There were two reasons for this: a) 16 miles, the longest I've run in a long while and over my "magic number" of 15; b) the fast-finish - not only was I going to have to run 16 miles, I was going to have to run the last 5 at race pace.

I realize that these fears were totally unfounded and also totally illogical. Why was 16 miles freaking me out when I'm going to be running 26.2 next month? And why would 5 miles at race pace be a problem when I'm hoping to be able to run all 26.2 miles at that pace next month? Silly Dawnie.

This morning, as I was getting ready, I was still trying to find a good way to approach it mentally, when it hit me: it's like an 11-mile warm-up followed by a 5-mile pace run. Bingo! 11 miles? No problem! 5 miles at race pace? No problem! I got my gear together and headed out.

I've been doing my long runs at a 12:00 pace lately, but that pace is getting harder and harder to settle into - it takes me 2-3 miles to get into it, because for those first few miles, my legs want to run closer to 11:30. I would go with it, except today I was afraid of not having enough energy for the big finish, so I made myself slow down. I hit the turnaround feeling great - it was a beautiful day on the lake. Sunny, a little windy, 50 degrees, and just fabulous. I stopped for a gel and some water, and to stretch out a bit. When I started heading home, I felt like I was just getting started. Awesome.

I was running into the wind a bit for the second half of the run, but it wasn't horrible. Just a little extra work. Nothing I couldn't handle. I hit the 11 mile mark and picked up the pace and realized that while I felt aerobically OK, my legs were pretty damn tired. Ugh. I stopped at mile 12 for some more gel and water and to mentally regroup. I stopped again at 14 for my last gel and told myself that I only had two miles left. Two miles! I can do it! It was turning out that "marathon pace" wasn't really all that fast - not holding myself back and keeping it relaxed was enough to get me down to the 10:53 target. I felt myself going faster the last two miles, and it was totally because I knew I was almost home, and I wanted to be done. Horse heading back to the barn and whatnot.

My splits for the last 5 miles of the run were: 10:54, 10:46, 10:58, 10:17, 10:14

Right on target, with those last two coming out of who knows where. I was tired when I got home, and figured I'd spend the afternoon sleeping. I've been chilliing on the couch watching TV for the past two hours, and I'm feeling surprisingly good. If I were to lie down in bed, I could probably fall asleep, but outside of the achy tiredness in my legs, I'm feeling pretty darn good. Maybe I'm getting the hang of this whole thing after all.

Posted by Dawn at April 9, 2006 01:18 PM

Comments

Posted by: Dawn (aka Pink Lady) at April 9, 2006 01:52 PM

Posted by: jank at April 10, 2006 09:04 AM