Week 9-- My longest run yet!

So even when I was in college and actually in shape, I never ran much more then 5-7 miles at a time, and never more then 10 miles, so my two half marathons qualify as my longest runs ever done at age 54 and 55 no less. Well no longer! Yesterday I did my first of 4 long runs of 15+ miles with a 15 miler (17, 18, and 20 are the others).

In addition I was able to set an unofficial PR for the half marathon of 2:47 which is 4 minutes and change faster then my Madison Half Marathon in November 2014.

I ate 5 various power bars along the way making sure my eating coincided with the actual aid stations at the Wisconsin Marathon (roughly every 2 miles), so I would eat and then be able to wash down the remnants at the aid station. It seemed to work, I stuck to about 125 calories and 30 carbs every 30 minutes, which seemed to work quite well, I was strong throughout the run, and did not feel weak from lack of energy at any point. In fact I ran the last 3/4 mile at a nice steady pace.

I am going to try gels for the next long run, since I was really only able to pack 6 bars on board and I really need about 8-9 to get the marathon distance. But that's why you experiment ahead of time. Either that or get a bigger pouch! By the way, I made a rule that even though I was on a treadmill, I only ate what I had in my waist pouch, to simulate actual race conditions, which went well.

I have been using a modification of my regular 3 minute run, 1 minute walk, recommended by the Galloway system and doing a .35 mile run and a .15 mile walk, which is like a 4:00/2:30 run walk sequence. I only did this to break up the boredom of running on a treadmill, but actually find it more comfortable for some reason. I am going to set my Garmin to the 4:2.5 time for the midweek runs in week 10 and see how that goes.

The rest of week 9, my runs on Wednesday and Thursday went very well, (4 miles of tempo, pace and 8 miles of steady pace) leaves me at 27 miles for the week, also my record.

Today I am running in the Round Lake Area Park District's foundation's Annual Frosty 5K, I have gotten age group medals in this race before, although today my legs might not be ready for a sustained effort. My goal is the 33-35 minute range for the day. Medals depend on how many people show up in my age group, if its 3, I finish 3rd. Its 14 degrees for race time at 11am, so that might keep attendance down.

NOTE: PR in the 5K at 34.21... see yesterday's post.