12 miles total. Today was a repeat of last week’s 8 miles of tempo running in prep for the Chasing the Unicorn Marathon. The race is September 13th in Washington’s Crossing, PA.
The run schedule called for a 2 mile warmup, the 8 miles at marathon pace or effort, and a 2 mile cooldown. As has been proven in the past few weeks, the use of the Hanson’s Marathon Method pace calculator website makes the adjustment to our goal pace to “marathon effort.” The high heat and early morning humidity makes the 6:45 pace I have set for a marathon goal very debilitating to practice. Adjusted for 80 degree temps and 85% humidity, the pace is 7:20. So I shoot to get under 7:15 because I can support that and still feel as if I can do more miles at tempo pace. The Hanson’s folks trained in Michigan, this calculator that adjusts for what we get in South Florida is accurate as to what the “feel” or effort expended is like.
I ran with Daniel and John Reback, who wore his Nike AlphaFly shoes for the first time. I bring a water bottle belt and one gel for this workout. I eat the gel at mile 3. Today I found the heat to be what we are used to, the humidity high, and the breeze from the Southeast to be very warm. It was as if a hair dryer was blowing warmer air at us, worse than if it were just calm. I felt odd on the 2 mile warmup, I was sweating more than I should have been for that effort in those temps.
We did the run and I felt in control for all of it. The first mile happens in the dark. Then the sunrise allows us to keep peeking at the watch to check the pace and see each mile split time. I know where the Garmin watch gets odd reading due to interference, so we don’t surge or slow as I probably did the first time we did these runs for the Boston Marathon 2019 training. We saw a few people we knew riding or running, and never had any rain. The skies south and west of us were grey and swollen. Rain was everywhere, some other friends cancelled their runs due t waking up and hearing thunderstorms or hard rain on their windows.
We added another 12 miles to the effort – glad I’m healthy and still in the chase!
-dm
drun4fun 