Short Long Run

I ran & walked 10 miles today, my longest run in quite a while and my "long run" for the next marathon, three weeks hence.

We ran on the Gateway Trail, where I have experienced two of my recent three hamstring injuries.  No injury today!  I would like to do a longer long run, but there isn't time.  From now until the marathon I will do shorter runs, hoping to avoid any more injuries.

I hope to finish in less than six hours, so here's my calculation: If I were to walk at a pace of 15 minutes per mile, that's four miles per hour, and in six hours I would get to mile 24.  But if I run one of those six hours at 10 minutes per mile, or 6 miles per hour, then after six hours I would be at mile 26.  That's exactly what I did today, except for only two hours and six minutes.  I walked for 50 triplets (3 paces), and then ran for 10.  The result was an average pace of 12:40, significantly quicker than the 13:44 needed to make six hours, which means that the walking was faster than expected, or the running, or both.  That's good - I'll probably slow down toward the end of the race.

I haven't posted here since August 24, mostly because there are big things happening in our lives right now, good things, but they take precedence over blogging.  We do keep running, though - in that time I have run 43 miles, not including today, and biked a bunch more.

Splits: 12:22, 13:00, 12:27, 12:20, 12:24, 24:37 (2 mi), 13:15, 13:36, 12:43, total 2:06:43, pace 12:40