26.2

Feel’n good this morning. Knees feel good, run felt good. The first mile stunk! I was running at a 12:50 pace. (Hey, its Monday!) At the two mile mark, I wasn’t much better hitting 25:15. However, the last mile only took 11 minutes!
What happened?
I noticed something on my three mile runs. At the end, I felt I could hustle to the finish line and I would run the last minute or so a lot faster than the rest of my run. I don’t like this. It is actually a pet peeve of mine to see amateur runners “sprint” to the finish line. To me, it shows that they didn’t know how much energy to expend for the distance they were running. It also makes me think that they left something out there. They didn’t run as hard as they could have. (It is different if you are a pro and are trying to “kick it” at the end to outrun someone… but why would an amateur need to “kick it” after 5 hours to come in 1,357th place?)
So, at the 2 mile mark, I turned up my pace just a hair. I wanted to end out of breath at the finish. I wanted to see the finish and have to struggle just to reach it. And I did. I rounded the corner, saw my stopping point and I couldn’t increase my pace a single step. I could maintain what I had going, but I couldn’t speed up.
Overall, it was a good run. I didn’t feel so amateurish!

Workout:

• Type: Run
• Date: 08/18/2008
• Time: 06:15:00
• Total Time: 00:36:12.00
• Distance: 3 miles
• Average Pace: 12:04.35/mile

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 6:15 am and is filed under Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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