i'm superfast

I had no idea how much better it is to run in a group than alone. After my group long run on Sunday, I met up with everyone again on Tuesday for a five miler. Something about being with a group makes the cold more bearable and the distance feel shorter. And I run faster! We started off running about a 9-minute mile and my nike+ipod says that we averaged 10:09 per mile once we were done.

Alas, the past two days I have run alone. Yesterday I did three miles and I really tried to push myself because of my recent paces on the group runs. I knew that my body was capable of going faster so I decided that it needed to work up to its potential. So I pushed and ran like the wind - while I was running I was thinking, "damn, I'm probably burning it up, running a sub-10 minute mile. Go me!" So yeah, when I finished, I found out that it was 10:11 per mile. I'm not saying that's bad AT ALL, but I'm just saying that I expected it to be better because of how much I "felt" like I was pushing myself. I guess I should have expected that because it's always the case. It still makes me wonder about the calibration of my nike+ipod. I think that when I push myself harder, my stride gets longer, BUT because the nike+ works as a pedometer, it thinks that I am just taking less steps, therefore shorter distance than I really am covering. Therefore my pace is not as ...............shit, I am not even making sense to myself at this point. Summary - nike+ is a big fat liar and I most likely run at a 7:00 per mile pace - HA!

1.1 miles to go

Yesterday morning I finished my longest run yet - 12 miles!! I had a hard time deciding what distance to run because I have gotten so much different information about training. I was originally following Hal Higdon's novice half-marathon training plan, but since I started it early I ended up finishing it early. In my revised plan, I had decided to run 11 miles yesterday, 12 miles next week, and then the half the following week. Well...........then I learned about "tapering" before a race and that I really shouldn't run 12 miles the week before the half-marathon. BUT, in Hal Higdon's intermediate training plan there is a 12 mile run the week before the half-marathon. Confused yet? So was I. I understand that the idea of tapering is to give you a rest before your race so that you can run your best, but if I'm not worried about my time, does that really matter? If I was training for a marathon, wouldn't I run 12 miles one week and then 13 the next? What's the difference, really?

In the end, I decided to take bits and pieces of everyone's advice and information and form my own plan. When I started out yesterday I set my nike+ipod for 11.5 miles. That was a good compromise and I knew that if I went that far, I could finish out 12 if I felt like it. I ran the first 8 miles with a great group of ladies (hi!) and then went on to finish the last 4 on my own - well, with my audiobook :-) I really felt good for the entire run and when my ipod congratulated me on finishing 11.5 miles, I already knew that I was going to push for 12. I had to keep checking the distance on my ipod for the last .5 miles because NO WAY was I going further than 12! When you check your status using the ipod, it announces your distance, total time, and pace. By doing this, I realized that I was *very* close to running 12 miles in under 2 hours. I pushed it as hard as I could and finished in 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds. Only once I was done did I realize that I had run 12 miles with just under a 10 minute per mile pace. I haven't run under 10 minutes per mile in quite a while! I owe a lot of thanks to the group for that!

I'm feeling good about the half, knowing that I only have to go 1.1 miles further than my longest run. Could I physically do it with 10 miles as my longest run? Probably. Could I mentally do it? Not sure. Knowing what I know now, about how much of a mental sport running is, I'm glad I went the extra distance. Now I have no excuses come race day.

postscript - i have plenty of excuses for why i haven't updated my blog though! none of them are very good, but hey, i'm not getting paid for this :-)