2018 Summer Marathon Training Week 7

Sunday Long Run Seven

Sunday Long Run Seven in the summer marathon training program was this weekend. I still haven’t signed up for a Fall New England marathon, but I do have three halfs on the schedule. If you’re still looking for a Fall marathon check out my link. Fall is a busy marathon season in New England!

We had a good sized group of about 30 people run this week.

This week probably a dozen or so of us ran the 14.6 mile course, or some semblance of it! There are a lot of turns for the week seven run, but I know these roads by heart. Early in the run we made a loop around Ell Pond across from Melrose High School.

I always enjoy this loop because we only run it a few times a year and there are some amazing homes in this neighborhood.

I ended up running most of the course by my self. The long run group made the loop of Ell Pond and the short run folks did not. So as we ran up the Fellsway Hills I caught up to several people and had some running conversation with them.

Even though I haven’t run a lot this summer I felt strong pushing up the hills. I kept telling my self that I was running longer than a half marathon so I should be a little bit conservative. But I’m not a very good conservative so I ran at a comfortable pace that was a bit faster than I probably should have.

Miles four and five were up the hills and I managed a 9:43 and a 9:40 mile while gaining 159 feet over the two miles and loosing 120 feet of elevation. After the charge up the hills I never had a sub 9 minute mile the rest of the day. But that was okay.

I managed a 13.93 mile run at an average pace of 9:23. This was 23 seconds/mile faster than last week when I ran 14.02 miles and had less elevation gain.

If I hadn’t pushed the hills maybe I could have run the full 14.6 mile course. Distance is important but I was able to push my pace on a fairly challenging course and I ran longer than the distance I’m training for, the half marathon. So over all, I think it was a good run.

I’m still adjusting to a new editor called Gutenberg from WordPress. It’s supposed to be wonderful, but so far I find it difficult to use. I know it takes time to adjust to and learn new things so I’m sticking with it for now.

It does dampen my enthusiasm to sit down and write since I have to spend more time trying to figure out how to do things. I’m also finding that I can’t do things I could before and I can’t do things that Gutenberg is supposed to do.

So if things look clunky for a while and I don’t write as often, you know why.

Run well my Friends and enjoy the rest of this summer!

Andy