Hi!

How I run that long on the treadmill- a combination of netflix (if I’m at home), kindle reading (home or gym) and good music if I’m at the gym. Basically… lot’s of distractions.

Yeah a lot of training plans call for long run pace to be 60-90 seconds slower than race pace, and I have trained like that (probably closer to 40-60 seconds slower more realistically) in the past.

In training for this marathon, I have amped up the intensity running more miles than I ever have before and I want to get my body more comfortable with holding a faster speed (closer to race pace) for long runs. My hopeful race pace is 7:26. For my training plan- my mid week runs that aren’t speed or tempo and my long runs call for a range from 7:30-8:30 pace. That way if I’m having an off day and am not feeling it I can feel OK about running that slower pace.

I do like to try to keep my long runs on the quicker end (sub 8) of that range if I feel up to it. Some of it is for physical reasons, but a lot of it is also for confidence.

Running like this definitely makes for a much more difficult long run than the typical plan calls for- but since I’m going to try to “go comfortably hard” for the whole marathon, I want to get my body used to working hard for the extended period of time.

Two great resources- Advanced Marathoning by Pete Fitzinger and McMillan Training and Coaching.

Shaya! I LOVE this- sometimes you need to hear about other people doing stuff like this and I totally agree with Steph- we run because we like to run and if you are that miserable. STOP… fighting through it will happen most days. Hope you guys had a great brunch and a great rest of the weekend. LIFE does GO ON. I’m skipping my 9 today because my legs still feel tired and I’m going to enjoy every bit of it.

10am rolls around, we meet at the gym and head out to Central Park. Proceed several minutes of me whining, stopping to take off a layer (shockingly, I was toasty in 23 degrees), stopping to pee, complaining that I just wanted hot chocolate, and then just stopping in the middle of the park at the furthest point from where we started. I just really, really didn’t feel like doing it.

I could have fought through, and might have eventually felt ok-even though I missed running after resting so much, it was so hard to motivate. At the same time, I was so unhappy and as Steph reasoned, “we run because we like to run. Let’s not do it when we’re despising every single minute.” There are days when you just don’t want to and most should probably be fought through. But this was one of those that I was just not going to be happy and I decided not to fight it. So I went out to brunch instead.

Anyway…talk about run failure. I got a shuffling 5 out of the desired 16. Life goes on 🙂

Thanks Jenny! You are probably right. I think the feeling of “quitting” before what the paper tells you to do is mostly why I felt like I failed. I have never trained at mileage this high, not sure I will again, but I like trying different kinds of training. Thanks for stopping by- hope you had a nice weekend too & hope the start of Boston training is going well!!