I Make Stupid Faces

Saturday: Pace Run



6.45 miles in 51.01

I started with a one mile warm up, then planned to do five miles at 7:51



I'm not so good at keeping my pace runs on pace. This was like some sort of pace/tempo hybrid.

Also, to zoom in on my pace miles, I can't seem to run at a steady pace in general.



I don't know why. I don't know if this is a bad thing or a normal thing.



Due to Friday's rainstorm, there was a bit of mud on my loop. I didn't let it stop me.

Compared to last week's pace run from fucking hell, this was awesome. Compared to nothing, this was still pretty good. I felt good. My pace felt tough, but maintainable. I don't know if I could have held it for 13 miles. But I felt spent and awesome afterward.

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Sunday: Long Run



11.65 miles in 1:46

My moving time was 1:42. 4 minutes spent waiting at stop light. I don't know how that factors in to my mile splits below. Whatever. It's a long run. Splits don't really matter.



But, that 12 minute mile?



For some reason I thought THAT would be a good idea for my long run.



It worked out fine. I'm not sure if bringing my Garmin on a long run is a good idea. I checked it every mile when it beeped, and then either felt good about myself "so fast for a long run!" or bad about myself "you can do better, Rose!" Which is stupid.

My normal M.O. for long runs is "easy, whatever." No stressing about time. But, I was reading, and some people recommend doing the long runs 30-60 seconds slower than their goal pace. Which seems pretty fast to me for a long run. I hit that sometimes. I hit that this time. well, the 60 second part. But that seems like a lot of pressure for the long run.

And some people online recommend doing pace miles in the middle of your long run. Or speed up to faster than pace runs for the last few miles of the long run.

So many ideas. Is what I'm doing right? Will some other way of doing the long run make me faster? I'm mind fucking myself.

What's your strategy with the long run? And how is that working out for you?

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Bonus pictures from the Run4Kids from a few weeks ago:

Running with one of the EMTs, who also EMTed me when I did my ultra.



Running in my rain coat.



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My quads hurt so bad from Thursday's 250 squats that I spent all weekend hobbling around. It hurt to sit down or stand up. The first mile of each run was hilarious. I felt like Forrest Gump before his leg braces fell off. I haven't been sore like this for a while. It's a good thing, though. It means I'm getting stronger.