Running Update

[grandmoffdavid.livejournal.com]

Regular followers of my irregular updates are no doubt aware that I have disparaged the training schedule I've been "following" for the upcoming half marathon as being "pansy." Well, that's not entirely true. See it's pansy until you get towards the end, at which point you have to start doing some pretty serious runs. Since I updated to Win 7 and my palm datebook isn't as useful, I hadn't really been paying as much attention to the lengths of the runs I was supposed to be doing, confident in the fact that I was far surpassing what I needed to do. (And I was.) Today is the day I do the long run of the week, so I decided to check in on how much I was supposed to run.

Six miles, as it turns out. Next week is up to 8. Clearly things are starting to get serious. Still, six miles is roughly 10k, so it wasn't a big deal. I did decide to turn it into a gear check run, so I was fully suited up when heading out. Camelback, check. Sport jelly beans, check. New running socks, check. Lycra shorts under my normal running shorts to prevent chafing, check. New running shoes, um, need to get those and break them in on some short runs. No matter, I was good to go.

After working out the normal early run aches and pains (yes, I stretched first) things went pretty smoothly. I kept my pace down and my heart rate was about the best I've controlled it in years. My normal running loop is about 1.3 miles, and my baseline pace for it is 15 minutes per loop (a fast run is closer to 12-13). Today I was a bit slower than that, probably 15 min, 20 seconds, but I ended up running for an hour 41 minutes (a bit over 8 miles, I'm guessing) and I could probably have done more. However, I'd run out of sport beans and water by that point (I only put in 2 pints) and my stomach was feeling a bit off, so I figured I'd call it a day.

In far more important news, I've made my preliminary playlist for the actual day. ( Cut for those uninterested and because it's damn long. )