Week Eight - Long Run Report (12/24/07)

Its Christmas Eve and yesterday (12/23) I did my Week Eight Long Run of 11 miles. My friend Suzy came along for the first 7 miles. Patti and I have been good friends with Suzy, her husband Tom and family for about 10 years. We were introduced through one of those suburban neighborhood playgroup things.

Suzy is going to Orlando with her sister to run the Disney Half Marathon race. Her race is less than three weeks away and Suzy’s longest run so far was a 6 miler. I think she has realistic expectations for her race and will walk when she needs to walk and plan on an 11 minute per mile pace. Suzy is a good athlete and even though she didn’t have the benefit of the BEST program from the start (she is following Hal Higdon), I’m sure she and her sister will do fine. Suzy is very excited about the accomplishment and her goal is to finish. Nevertheless she wants to extend her long run as much as possible. Her goal today was 8, but she ran out of gas and wisely cut back to 7. From what Suzy described to me, it sounded like her muscles were out of sugar: she had a mild case of hitting the wall. I know the feeling when your legs just can’t move. She only had some cheese and crackers before the run. I urged her to eat a bigger meal before these long slow runs. Her body is not accustomed to running for over 75 minutes.

We ran together at her goal pace of about 11 minutes per mile. When she was finished, I went on for 4 more miles. We ran at Ridley Creek State Park. Since this course is measured every tenth of a mile, it was easy to manage our distances. I ran the final 4 miles at a 9:30 pace: faster than the 10:00 Long Run pace but slower than Marathon Pace. With the first 7 miles at 11:00, my run will look pretty slow on the training log, but it was encouraging to be able to speed it up after already running for well over an hour.

I have to run two 6 milers to finish off the week. Hopefully the report on those runs is uneventful.