Well, week five of training has come and gone and what a fantastic week! I felt great after all my runs this past week.
It started out last Tuesday with a short 3 mile run which I did in record time (for me). I decided that I’d throw some ‘speed’ work into the mix (which is supposed to help in the long run) so I finished the 3 miles in 23:30 – significantly faster than the 25:30 that I normally take.
On Wednesday I opted to do my 5 mile run at my marathon pace, which I’m hoping will be 8:30 per mile. That had me finishing the 5 miles in 42:30.
Thursday was another 3 miles and I was shooting for 24 minutes, 8 minutes per mile, which I got. I’m still playing around a bit with the training but I figured that I wasn’t up for another run like I did on Tuesday.
After resting on Friday, I did my 10 mile run on Saturday morning. My plan was to take 3 walking breaks (of a minute each) for the run: one after 2.5 miles, another one after 5 miles and the last one after 7.5 miles. Everything went according to plan. I did the run at a slower pace – 9:13 per mile because Hal tells me that the long runs should be done from 45-90 seconds per mile slower than your marathon pace. As suggested though, I picked up the pace for the final mile to 8:30 to finish up. I think my final time was 92:30 or so…
I skipped the cross training on Sunday, but what else is new? I haven’t done any real cross training since I started the training. I’m looking forward to the spring when I’ll be able to jump on the bike on Sundays.