A good note

I'm ending this week on a good note: a great long run!

I wanted to run 2 hours to try to see if I felt prepared for the Toad, which is in just under four weeks from now. As I got going and settled in to the run, I continued to feel really good, and I decided to aim for a half-marathon distance at minimum. The kilometres really started ticking away by the time I'd gotten into the teens. I'd set my watch to give me my split for every kilometre, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The longer I went, the faster I got--and not just a tiny bit faster, a whole lot faster. I'd planned to aim for a 5:30/km pace, since it was a fairly long run. I stuck to that for about the first 10km, which I did in 54 minutes, but gradually my pace began to speed up, until I realized I'd run the 16th kilometre in 4:42. In fact, I ran each of the last 5.5 kilometres of that half-marathon distance at a 4:45 pace. I couldn't believe it. I have a hard time holding that pace when I run JUST five kilometres on my speed runs.

In the end, I ran 23km in exactly 2 hours! And I finished my half-marathon distance in 1:52:20, which is almost three minutes faster than I ran my real half-marathon a year and a half ago.

I'm feeling much more confident about tackling the Toad right about now.

And I'm getting to experience again what I remember experiencing in my long runs and races last year -- that I would get faster the further I went, not slower. I mean, I was just ticking along. I think my legs were just about numb, to tell the truth. My breath was extremely even. I was just laying down the pace without even thinking about it.

My training plan is to do a couple of shorter speed runs this week (by shorter, I mean 10km, and hopefully at least once at my favourite place to run trails -- because I need the hill work).

Then I will do a shortish long run this coming weekend, between 15-18km.

Then two 12km runs back to back on the following weekend. And then rest up a bit!

Because then it's race weekend.

I will keep aiming to run five times a week, not necessarily for super-long distances. So far, I've been holding steady at four runs a week, which isn't fabulous, but hey. Seems to be working okay.