down by the big lake...

Saturday morning 04.18.09:

As a normal Saturday K and I headed down to the lakefront to get in the mid-long distance run for the week. She was scheduled to run 12 with her group as their all on the tapering cycle towards the Pig Marathon on May 3rd. On my half marathon training I had a 3/1 two hour endurance run. It was critical I push the ending part of this run as I felt very guilty for missing my mile repeat speed work earlier this week. The weather was for once finally nice out down by Lake Michigan at my 8:15am start time at about 50 degrees, thin cloud cover and a slight breeze off the lake out of the SE.

As I headed southward on the lake front path at a cruiser pace towards my one hour turn-around point which worked out to be just past McCormick Place at seven miles. After I started to head back northward on the pace I mentally got into a little lazy pace but after a few minutes I realized why…I needed to visit a bathroom as I was slightly over-hydrated which I did properly in a restroom about a mile south of Navy Pier at about an hour & 25 minutes into the run.

After that quick pit-stop if was amazing how much more comfortable I was able to run at a required quicker pace over the last 35 minutes of the run. My mile times lowered nicely to were I was able to run the last two mile at ~7:30 which showed me that I was able to force the pace especially during the fatigue time of a mid-long run. When I got back to the parking area to finish my run I clocked in my 14 miler in 1:55:47…below are my 7 mile splits with time, average and max HR:

1:00:04 – AHR 131bpm – MHR 138bpm
55:43 – AHR 145bpm – MHR 153bpm

I felt exhausted & great after that achieved run was in the books :-) Of course we all went out for a great breakfast afterwards…

but how would my legs recover for tomorrow?

b