I had a great run this morning. 10 miles, hitting all my target paces Greg set up for me. (1 mile warm up, 1 mile under 10:18, 4 miles under 12:00, 1 mile under 10:18, 1 mile under 10:45, 2 mile cool down.)
It was night and day from my last 10 mile run, which was admittedly hot and humid and felt like an enormous struggle despite averaging almost 13 minutes per mile. That pace is about as slow as one can run while still running. It definitely felt like I was shuffling along for a brutal 10 miles.
Part of it was the weather that day, but part of it is the progress I’ve been making. For a neat visual, I decided to pull my snapshots from Strava and look at them over the course of my last six weeks of training. Snapshots like these don’t tell the entire story, because you can’t see the rest intervals dropping my pace after 400 meter repeats, or how hot the weather was, or if I maintained a tempo pace in the middle.
But they still tell a story of improvement. I’m trending longer and faster, and I’m thrilled. I’ve been consistently completing the workouts and I’ve got something to show for it already. YES.
I’m benefitting from Greg’s expertise and ability to create challenging but manageable workouts for me, from the accountability he provides that makes me want to push hard to meet the targets he sets, and from planning ahead to find time for running.
Check it out – and if you want to make your own, picmonkey is a great free online tool for making fast picture collages so you can see your week to week progress too.
First Training Run from Greg!
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Today’s 10 Mile Run
I averaged a faster pace today than I did for half the distance on my first training run of the summer, and that’s thrilling.
Running 10 miles and feeling good gives me hope that I’ll meet my goal to run the Maine Half Marathon on September 30th without walking and with a smile on my face at the finish. (A grimace is acceptable.) It’s been a few years since I ran a half, and it feels good to think that I might be back!