Since my marathon training had been a little topsy-turvy lately, I decided to experiment, borrowing a page from baseball's starting pitchers. Until it seems too foolish to do so, I'm going to try to increase my marathon long run training mileage every five days instead of seven.
I feel the seven day increase is a little too static for me, that once something happens where I can't (or won't) go long during my "long run day," I'll give up on it.
Also I feel that my own training needs longer runs to be closer together.
This morning I got out and running by 6:12 a.m., a veritable record for me, for what turned out to be a 14.58-mile run, five days after the Rock'n'Roll Chicago Half Marathon.
It was still dark but was getting light. My thoughts on this was to run under the cover of night where it is pretty well lighted and then rejoin my regular routes when it was clearly daytime.
It really didn't take long -- I was seeing what I felt was light by the second or third mile, while I was in Atlantic Station.
Some interesting waypoints for me:
Mile 1: 10th Street and Piedmont Ave.
Mile 2: Peachtree and 17th Street
Mile 3: 17th Street and the intersection before the overpass
Instead of going on State street and cutting through the Georgia Tech campus, I decided to run back to Peachtree for Mile 4 and then ran along the road. Mile 5 was at Peachtree and 7th Street. Mile 6 was back on my course just before North Avenue.
I hit mile 8 just before my office building. I had started drinking Gatorade from the lumbar bottle I carried with me at about 5.3 miles and it was done by the time I reached my office building.
I was also carrying two technical T-shirts, one of which I changed at my office building. I drank about one and a half bottles of water (about 24 ounces) at work and then re-filled the bottle.
I purposely told myself I wouldn't drink any more until a mile or so and by mile 9.13 I was drinking water again.
At 10.44 I was in a little bit of a panic -- I started to get really hungry and I had left most of my energy snacks back at work -- I only had a small sample size of Sport Beans.
I ate those and drank the rest of the water. I was still in a little bit of a panic because now I had no water or food but kept plugging away. It actually did me pretty well for the next 2+ miles and I made it back to my place in Virginia-Highlands ok.
At home, I drank a quart of energy drink (random packet samples I found from the Rock'n'Roll Chicago Half Marathon) and changed out of drenched shorts, T-shirt and socks.
I had to run an errand at the Post Office, so that was a few additional tenths of a mile and then finally I was headed back to my starting point.
I felt pretty good. I may run long runs in my new running shoes (Nike Air Pegasus+ 26/C) because my right foot felt flat in my current shoes that have about 340 miles on them now. I also developed a little chafing on my chest when I wore a technical T-shirt up to the Post Office. I switched to a cotton T-shirt for the last seven-tenths of a mile to my starting point and was fine.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the little strap holder on the wristband of my Garmin Forerunner 250 (the Hammer of Dawn) broke off as I was leaving my place. So I had to order another one -- $22.99 total. So that's how much my run cost me today.
Time: 6:12 a.m.
Temp: 77 degrees
Gear: CFSST (Champion C9 red, Champion C9 blue), shorts, Nike Air Pegasus+ 26/B.
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