sailing...

Monday mid-morning:

Since K and I had the day off from work we both needed to run longer marathon paced FIRST runs for the day. We drove down to the lakefront at about 9am hoping it might be slightly warmer as it turned out it was at 19 degrees with a constant 20mph west wind with gusts to 30mph so with the windchill it was slightly below zero degrees Fahrenheit…yikes but I couldn’t run on the treadmill again plus my legs needed some asphalt/concrete training. K needed to run a 9 mile marathon pace run and I needed to run a 10 mile marathon pace run at approx ~8 minute per mile.

We ran the warm-up mile together as we noticed the lakefront path still had so spotty glazed ice patches on it. During the w/u I noticed my quads felt heavy but they slowly loosened up within several minutes. After that w/u mile we ran at our own required paces southward on the lakefront path till our turn around points and then the return trip northward. Even though the winds were out of the west no matter which direction; south or north it felt like it was in your face for 80% of the run and the gusts made it just that much worst. At 6’4" tall I was basically like a sail on a boat catching all sorts of strong winds but I kept thinking to myself even this was better than the 20 miler I ran on the health club treadmill just 24 hours earlier.

Below is my 10 mile projected marathon pace time with average mile pace, average & max heart zone info:

10 mile – 1:17:25 – 7:45 pace – average HR 140bpm – max HR 147bpm (while pushing a big wind gust burst)

I ran a half mile cool down after the tempo portion for a run total of 11.5 miles before heading back to the car and waiting for K’s return. I was pleasantly surprise to see how recovered my body was after the 20 miler the day before & the 30 minute all out an-aerobic cycling test time trial on Saturday. I had several 3:45 paced half mile sessions during the run duration which were not to taxing at all plus I kept all my mile paces under 7:56 with not too high of HR values which I think the cold weather kept those numbers down somewhat. All in all it was a strong run day for me (and K too!)…

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