Today it started – my 18 week training program that will lead me into Boston 2007. Oh, did I mention I got my confirmation card in the mail? Well, I did. My time was based on the net time not the gun time so I will most likely be in the first wave with my 3:17:52 (my understanding is that Boston is doing a two wave start and the cut off last year for the first wave was 3:21 or so). I don’t know how much I am looking forward to being packed into a corral with a bazillion other runners and having my pace dictated by the masses for the first 10K or so (maybe longer from what I’ve read). It may be a good thing in that it will keep me on a conservative pace and enable me to try to run negative splits.
Well, I digress. My run today was described in Advanced Marathoning as general aerobic and speed – 8 miles with striders. I skipped the striders because I want to make sure my calf is 100% before I put any kind of faster stress on it. Pfitzinger describes general aerobic as:
“10 miles or less that’s done at a steady pace … In other words, these are your standard, moderate effort, putting-in-the-miles runs.”
That says something but does not really describe the pace. They are described elsewhere as between lactate threshold runs and easy runs but this doesn’t help much. My search of the internet brought some of the same confusion. For example, here is a letsrun thread. In the end, I figured the pace for me should be between 7:30 and 8:15 pace right now. I don’t know if that is overly aggressive but I think I will stick with that. I just need to make sure my easy runs are easy 8:15-8:45 pace.
So, today’s effort felt really good. I did a mile warmup at 8:30 and then ran the next 7 miles at a steady 150-153 HR. That didn’t seem too hard but it was harder than my usual 138-142 HR runs (which is what I have mainly done the past 8 months in accord with the Maffetone plan that I used to just get back in shape and stay healthy). The next seven miles were run at 7:37, 7:34, 7:34, 7:29, 7:30, 7:33, 7:37. It went smoothly and felt really good.
Tomorrow is a medium long run of 11 miles. The pace is similar to long runs so that would be 7:50-8:35 pace. That should be manageable.
8.3 miles/1:04:00
Let the bad air out ... 