Running With Jack

So how do my legs feel the day after my longest run since my marathon last May? Surprisingly good! Yesterday the muscles ached, but by evening they felt much better. Usually after such a long run I have trouble sleeping because of the aching legs, last night I slept like a baby, almost 10 hours! This morning I woke up and was a little stiff, but no aches and pains!!

Yesterday I mentioned that there was a stretch of the long run route that I had not previously measured, so was uncertain of my exact distance. This was bugging me this morning, so after lunch I hopped on the bike and decided to check it out. I have previously measured the first 20K and the last 8K, so I headed to the 20K point. Resetting my bike computer I rode my bike over the rest of the route from yesterday up to the point that I was sure of. To my amazement my bike computer showed 8.6K. So 20K + 8.6K + 8K = 36K+

In other words I didn’t run 34K/21M on Saturday, I ran 36K/22M!

Is this possible? I don’t doubt that there is some error marking a trail using a bicycle computer, but on the other side it works out pretty well with my average pace. If I really ran 36K/22M then my average pace was 5:57/K (9:35/M). This is entirely possible based on my average running times from previous long runs.

In any case I know that it was an excellent training run yesterday, very hard, but excellent. I feel good today. I even managed 20K/12M on the bicycle today. With my marathon exactly five weeks away I am confident that I will finish stronger than the last time if I don’t make any mistakes during the race (or up to the race).

In two weeks I want to repeat yesterdays route, if that goes well then I know I’m ready!