Finally did my “long run” for the week. I slept in late, then figured I’d be no good on my run if I did it on an empty stomach, so I ate a small breakfast, then waited another two hours after that to be sure I wasn’t running on a full stomach. Does that seem contradictory? It does? Don’t care. Mainly I was stalling.
Plus I have a blister on my left heel, from my new/old shoes, the replacement Brooks Adrenaline GTS 5s. Bummer.
Five and a half miles is a long way. When I originally planned it, I was going to do the “run to work” thing — bringing a change of clothes and toiletries to work the day before, then getting up the morning of, throwing on some running clothes and heading on in. Unfortunately, that plan was done in by lots of other things that caused me not to be ready. No laundry done by Wednesday, for example. Also, I had plans on Thursday night which precluded my going to bed early for my run. So I pushed it back to Saturday.
Then Friday came and went and I was tired ’cause it had been a long week and no running, which pushed both my 3 mile and my long run back another day.
I did the 3 miler yesterday. Which brings me back to where the post started; my 5.5 mile run. Yes, I’m even stalling about writing about the long run.
Since I couldn’t do the “run to work” thing, my second plan was to run from work — put on my running gear, grab my bus pass, take the bus downtown and then run home. But that didn’t seem very fun, for some reason. So I decided to run in my neighborhood. Since my normal route is either a 3.5 or 4.0 mile loop, and I already know the half-mile marks, I planned on running along my normal route for 3 miles, then turning around and going back for 2.5.
The major difference between this new 5.5 mile out-and-back-again run and the 5.5 miles I run to-and-from downtown is that there are way more hills in my neighborhood. So it’s a tougher run.
With all that in mind, here are my half-mile splits (elapsed time in italics):
- 4:49.29 (04:49.29)
- 4:55.84 (09:45.13)
- 5:03.51 (14:48.64)
- 4:45.00 (19:33.64)
- 4:34.49 (24:98.13)
- 4:59.86 (29:07.99)
- 7:40.09 (36:48.08)
- 5:49.13 (42:37.21)
- 5:47.62 (48:24.83)
- 4:50.30 (53:15.13)
- 6:16.36 (59:31.49)
Yeah, I died after 3 miles, my turnaround point. My average per-mile pace was 10:49 or so. I’m tempted to recalculate it after tossing out the high one… but what’s the point? I did what I did, and that’s what I record. Oh, well. I did have one good half-mile after that but felt dog-slow for most of the last half of my run. Not sure why I’ve been so slow this week but, as I’ve said before, I’m not going to let it get me down. Just keep runnin’.