Long Run - 8 miles

After losing Thursday as a running day to the Feather Falls hike, I had to make it up somehow. I managed to convert the Saturday run with the group from church into my tempo run, and somehow had to get in the long run today. Originally I had wanted to do it in the morning before church, but that evening I found out that I'd have to go to both services. They forgot to tell me ahead of time that I'm doing announcements during service for the month of January. D'oh!

I managed to fit it in this afternoon, as my wife and 2/3 of the kids were taking a nap. It turned out to be a fabulous afternoon, too, the temperature was about the same as yesterday, except without the icy breese. That made for a perfect running day!

I did discover something about the Champion tights I picked up at Target, though: wear shorts over them. It seems that while the bottom part of the tights are exactly that (tight) on my legs, the top part that goes over my butt and around my waist is relatively loose. As a result, I spent the entire run pulling my pants up! They wouldn't have fallen completely down, but they would have been far enough down to show butt crack. I don't think the world is ready for that one.

The goal was projected marathon pace (PMP) + 30 seconds. Somehow in my mind, I confused my 10k pace with PMP, and tried to run all 8 miles at 8:37. On that front, in general, I failed. When I got back and checked, come to find out PMP is actually 45 seconds FASTER than 10k pace (8:07), and this run was to be 30 seconds faster than that! The goal was supposed to have been 9:22, so I ended up with an average pace 15 seconds faster. The goal I was trying for was actually my PMP.



Splits
Mile 1: 8:38.65
Mile 2: 8:40.77
Mile 3: 8:44.80
Mile 4: 9:24.98
Mile 5: 9:18.99
Mile 6: 9:12.22
Mile 7: 9:32.36
Mile 8: 9:33.05
.02 Mi: 0:16.40 (walking)

Thus endeth Week #18 of marathon training. A couple interesting things happened along the way. At one intersection this old guy in his car saw me coming, but rather than stop or speed up, he just kept going, but slowed down and stared at me the whole time. I had to stop while he drove by, and didn't seem to understand why I was giving him the stink-eye.

The other thing was this little dog chased me twice, once going out, and once coming back. He didn't catch up to me, and gave up both times. Wimpy dog, I wasn't going that fast.



8.02 miles, 1:13:22, ~1011 calories burned. I'd have a better calorie count, except dummy Greg managed to lose his Polar strap. The number listed came out of the Garmin Forerunner 305, except it doesn't bother to use HR in calculating calories burned. Gotta love Garmin.