What a great weekend! The weather in Nashville is gorgeous. Fall is my absolute favorite time of year. Being from mono-seasonal FL, I find the changing leaves and cool temps glorious. Saturday was spent playing in a 2 v. 2 beach volleyball tournament with friends on a whim, tossing some disc (frisbee), watchin a little college football (disappointing Gator loss), and enjoying a good dinner with friends. Great. I got to bed at a reasonable hour in prep for my big run this morning.
The Run
That big run was to cover the entire marathon course. One of the neat things about this marathon is that it is based entirely in Percy Warner Park in Nashville. It's a gorgeous, 2000+acre(or something) park with beautiful woods and hills and overlooks of town. There is one large 11.2mi loop with several crosspoints for shorter options. The marathon covers this big loop in both directions by utilizing one cross road. The route my running partner and I did this morning was taken from the RD's suggestion made to another runner online. It essentially covers the first 14mi of the course plus some. I have run the 11.2mi loop several times now but always in the counter-clockwise, with-traffic direction, which is the direction the marathon takes first. In order to change it up, I simply took an opposite turn and did the route in reverse. Hills are completely different in reverse. I actually think the reverse direction is tougher. Adding on a little extra, including a wrong turn, we ran about 18miles - my farthest yet. What's more is that the pace was faster as well. It was a great run.
Lessons
I still need to drink more volume and more often. Before the run I ate a granola bar and banana - not adequate. I get really hungry about 6-8mi in. Today I was somewhat prepared and brought some gels. Well, I decided that I don't really care for them. I prefer snacking on some wheat thins or whole grain pretzels. I'll work on that this weekend at Stump Jump-11mi. Body glide has worked well. Headbands work well.
This week was SOLID. The last five week's totals were: 36, 24, 28, 12.5, 7 -- not ideal. You can see the big time drop there during the injury. The 24,28 were just weaksauce weeks for whatever reasons. While I planned on being conservative and doing maybe 30-32 this week, I felt great. I kind of took the "run what I feel plan" which resulted in 38mi, my all time high. Hopefully my healthy body will remain that way. Those 38 included one 8mi run(4mi under 7:00 pace), a 7mi, and a 5mi. This coming week I plan on keeping it moderately low intensity so as not to be completely burned out for Stump Jump. I may throw in a hill workout for kicks and hope to make it out to some trails to reorient myself with them before the race.
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