Thursday, September 07, 2006

Let The Good Times Roll

Today's plan called for 12 miles at a high aerobic pace. After shuffling through the first mile in 8:23, the old legs responded and we were off with healthy gallop off the island and out the highway. I decided on an out and back course today to minimize the hills and certainly do away with the short steep hills that charactize the town. Instead, I wanted easy rises, easy downs, and mostly flat. This meant only one course was available: Route 190 out of town.

Route 190 heads out of town and in just over 7 miles reaches U.S. Route 1. The Charles Davis Memorial 7 mile race is run from this corner into Eastport and therefore, the miles are marked on the pavement. So decided I would run out to the 1 mile marker (which is 6 miles out of town) and come on back. Always a little nervous when I do these types of out and back's because if trouble happens, it's a long way home.

Going out, the first two miles are part of my everyday courses. Then the pavement gets a lot better with a breakdown lane instead of a ditch and the road has less variations. Mile 3 is located at the top of a hill and then its down to sea level (literally - it's a causeway) to mile 5. Then an up and down to 6 and turn.

I carried a small 6 oz. bottle of water in my right hand this trip. This little bottle is molded to fit the hand pretty well so it's not overly bothersome. I found it was just enough to get me through. Though on my easy days, I like to drink a lot more. The pace going out quickened to a steady effort with the heart rate in the 150's and the average pace down to 6:54 by the turn. I was quite pleased by this point as I was feeling like the legs were turning over pretty easily and I wasn't tiring. As I turned around for the trip in, I felt motivated to up the tempo and cruised through mile 7 in 6:11. Onto the straight causeways and mile 8 went by in 6:04. A 6:30 took me to mile 9 (top of the hill) and I ran down the other side in 6:02 for mile 10. By mile 11 I had covered the last 5 miles within a few seconds of the International 5 Mile Race 4 weeks ago with a heart rate hovering around 168. At the race my heart rate was 178.

I finished hard to average a 6:15 pace for the trip back in and felt great. I was thinking however, how tomorrow's "recovery 18" is going feel real good!

12.25 miles in 1:20:37 (6:35 average pace 160 HR)

1 Comments:

Blogger Mike said...

Holy progression run Batman! Good to see the legs turning over so well on these runs. Marathon pace is going to feel much easier this time around.

9/07/2006 2:08 PM  

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