Twenty Miles

Sunday, September 8, 2013:

This was the last long training run before the marathon three weeks from now.  We'll do some medium-length runs, and shorter ones, but this is the last one that helps much toward building the marathon muscles.  Now it's taper time.

If I could order the perfect weather for this run it wouldn't be much different from today.  Temperature low 60's, dewpoint in the mid 50's, cloudy, no dew on the grass trails, a nice 8 mph breeze, lovely!  I'd make the temp and dewpoint 5 or 10 degrees lower, I suppose, but hey - this was pretty close, considering that the forecast high for tomorrow is 100!  We started the four-hour event at sunrise and finished by about 10:50 am. 

You see why I like running here

I took five Clif Shot gels, but no salt this time - an experiment.  I didn’t get cramps, probably because of the magnesium that I’m taking, but the calves did tighten up a bit, so I’ll take a little salt in the next marathon.  The overall pace was 11:44, which corresponds to a finish of 5:07 if I could keep it going for another six miles.  Maybe I could - every loop today was slightly faster than the previous one, and I believe that I’m a bit faster when running on pavement than on today’s rough trails.

Whining:  The right knee with PFS acted up early and then settled down.  I seemed to lean to the left a bit toward the end, but not badly.  Otherwise nothing but sore muscles, which are sort of the objective of the run!  I’ll take it.  It’s a masterpiece. 

Miles	Time	Pace	Loop
5.94	1:11:19	12:00	1
5.94	1:10:24	11:51	2
5.16	1:00:08	11:39	3
3.01	33:15	11:03	4
-------	----------	--------
20.05	3:55:06	11:44	Totals

Saturday, September 7:

St Croix Valley Runners.  We three walked the short loop across the Lake McKusick boardwalk.  I wore the Nike Wildhorse shoes, and felt a little pain in the left outside forefoot, as if it was bruised on the bottom from the five-miler the day before.  Hmmm.