Taper Time

The final 20+ miler of marathon training is complete! For me it is always a great feeling to have this done. To me the long run is the most demanding and of course the most time consuming workout of training. I think it is also a likely spot to get injured so to have finished them is a relief.

Friday night I kept it easy and ran a little over 6.5 miles in an on and off rain on Kelly Drive. I don't mind the rain so much when it is in the 50's and it stopped half-way through the run so all was good. My legs were a little tight but I thought this easy run would be just the thing to loosen them up for a long run on Saturday morning. I also did two non-consecutive miles at marathon pace and everything felt ok.


Saturday I jumped on a route that Ian had posted on the group message board. It included most of the the major hills in Fairmount Park. I was going to wait for Sunday to do my long run but the possibility of doing the first 13 miles with a good group on a hilly course was to tempting.

A very light rain was falling when we started but this quickly ended and the rest of the way was dry. We somehow missed our first hill and instead of taking the longer hilly sharp turn to Lemon Hill we took the short less hilly wider turn and cut a little off the route. Plenty of hills ahead to make up for losing a couple.

At about 2 miles my legs were feeling strong and I knew it was going to be a good day. We moved on to the Lansdowne hill and then St Georges. Down to the Belmont Plateau and into the woods on the fire road for Parachute Hill back down again and then up the "Worst Hill". I don't know if Worst Hill is Ian's name for an unnamed hill or something that other people call it to.

Back to MLK and then up the Bloody Nipple. A 1 mile hill that varies in grade but drags on and on. The rest of the route was either downhill or flat. At this point it was Chem Steve, Ian and I and the pace picked up. I figured we were near my marathon pace of 6:48 and my thoughts were confirmed when we got on MLK and measured mile went by in 6:45. We kept this pace up till the Art Museum where Ian and Steve headed home and I headed up Kelly drive for 8 more.

There are good and bad things about leaving a group to run the remaining portion on your own. The parts that sucks is of course the fact that you are no longer running with friends, conversation is gone, and you don't have people around to join in the agony and keep things moving. I think it is good for training though. This is the portion when you are most fatigued and you now have to rely on yourself to keep the pace up and finish the run strong.

We had already done 3-4 miles at or near my marathon pace so I slowed down for the last 8. I was kind of aiming for 7:25-7:30 but the miles kept coming faster than that. 7:01, 7:07, 7:07. After each mile spilt I'd say to myself "Slow it down" but the splits kept up. I was feeling quite tired at this point but not really dragging and my legs were going strong. It's how I like to feel at the end of a long run, drained but still with some left in the tank. 7:08, 7:10, 7:15, and a 6:35 for the last mile going up to the Art Museum. I pushed a lot on the last mile but I definitely could have gone faster.

This run left me feeling really good about my training. The first 2/3 of this run were fairly difficult but I was still able to finish strong. This was also my third run of 15 miles or greater in 7 days. 18 on Sunday, 15 on Wednesday and 21.5 today in 2:38. It also makes for over 85 miles in the last 7 days. Time for taper. A slight drop to about 55-60 miles next week and then more after that. Here we come Boston.