Just Keep Running.

Even though it's been a week and a half since I have blogged about running, I've actually been following my running schedule to the T. It's exactly 4 weeks until my half-marathon in Nashville at the Country Music/RocknRoll series race and now is not the time to slack off so I just keep running. I also finally decided which distance to run at the Bridge the Gap race that is 2 weeks following my half. I decided on the 10K. I have yet to finish a 10K distance in race format and I thought it would be a happy medium in between the 5K, which I did last year, and the half-marathon which my legs won't be ready to repeat so quickly.

So my runs since the last check in have been going well. I ran a few nights on a full stomach which is not optimal, but they still went fine. My long run last Friday was HARD! I started out feeling fine, but I must have went out too quickly because the last 2 miles were a struggle to finish. I didn't stop, but I definitely wasn't loving running for the homestretch that day. Here's the quick recaps...

3/30 Run: 12 miles, 1 hour 54 mins, 9:28 min/mile pace, 68 degrees and sunny.

4/2 Run: 7 miles, 1 hour 6 mins, 9:22 min/mile pace, HOT at 87 degrees and full sun.

4/3 Run: 3.23 miles, 28 mins, 8:42 min/mile pace.

4/4 Run: 6 miles, 55 min 40 secs, 9:13 min/mile pace, 57 degrees and overcast.

Then today it was time again for my next long run. I was kinda dreading it after my struggle to complete 12 miles last week so my strategy was to start out at a conservative easy pace and try to hold that the entire way so I didn't struggle at the end. I was scheduled to run 13 miles. I hadn't run the past 2 days so my legs were fairly fresh, but I was shocked at how well my run went. As I kept ticking off the miles I kept feeling pretty good. I felt really good at the half-way point so I started picking up the pace little by little and actually was able to negative split my last 7 miles. The other thing that amazed me was that even though I did my first 5 miles on my hilly route, I still managed to pull off a 2 hour 1.5 min half-marathon training time! That is a PR for me at this distance and it gives me the confidence that I'm ready for my Nashville race. Nashville's course is very hilly so I would love to run this kind of time there, and under 2 hours would be fantabulous, but really I will be happy with 2:10 or under since the hills will be a major factor.

Here's a look at today's run...you can see where I picked it up some at the half way mark once the hills were behind me.

These are my splits recorded by my Nike+ app...

And here's the data that was captured from my Garmin Forerunner 610. These are the more accurate stats since the Garmin uses satellite GPS, but they are pretty close.

4/7 Run: 13.12 miles, 2 hours 1.5 mins, 9:15 min/mile pace, 56 degrees at 8:15am, set new PR.

And now that my long run is in it's time to relax and enjoy the Easter weekend and all the festivities that go along with it : )