Weekly Training - October 5-11: 16.4 Mile Run Saturday, A New Distance Milestone!

Sunday - Nice Recovery Run, 3.5 miles, 40:14, at 11.50 pace, right in the middle of my recovery range per the McMillan Running Calculator.  I was a little tentative because of pain in the left knee that was more than I'm used to.  My knees don't usually hurt, but I've been getting a little knee pain following my weekly Long Run since I've been stretching the distance.  However, it usually goes away in a day or two, so I haven't been overly concerned.  Today, it got  a little better after a couple of miles, and was much less by evening.

Saturday - A new distance milestone: 16.4 miles!  Less than 10 miles from the goal!  I guess that's an extra benefit to training for a first marathon: as training progresses, there are constant rewards from reaching a series of intermediate goals.  Saturday was a great day for a long run, 59° at 7 AM.  I took the same route through the park; just added one more 2.2 mile lap.  My goals were modest: to complete the distance, and to try to sustain a 11:00 pace or better.  On previous new distances, my first attempt has been SLOW.  The pace turned out OK, had a few ebbs and flows, but kept finding second and third winds.  I didn't really struggle much until about the last half-mile, and finished up at 2:57:07, a 10.80 pace.  I'll take it.  The next one will be better.

Monday through Friday:  Nature played a cruel trick; after a few days of mostly cooler morning temps following the official onset of Fall, night-time lows and humidity crept back up to July-August levels this week.  It has no businees being 81° at 5:30 AM in October!  Started out oppressive Monday; trending up to miserable by Thursday.  My pace suffered.  But enough whining.  A cool front is coming Friday!

Friday - No running - rest for Saturday's Long Run.
Thursday - Easy run, 3.1 miles. 34:04, 10.99 pace, 81°, 98% humidity.
Wednesday - Tempo run, 3.1 miles, 29:37, 9.55 pace, 79°, 95% humidity.
Tuesday - Easy run, 3.1 miles. 32:56, 10.62 pace, 80°, 96% humidity.
Monday - Tempo run, 3.1 miles, 29:42, 9.58 pace, 76°, 94% humidity.