SCM Week 9

After last week’s step back week, this was a build week. It included the first 20 mile (of 6, 20 miles or longer) run between now and April. I have another in two weeks and then the week after that is Santa Clarita Marathon, the second training race on the way to Leona Divide, Bulldog 25k was the first back in August.

This is how it all fell into place;

• Monday. 5.55 miles recovery, nice and easy on the treadmill.
• Tuesday. off. Yup check!
• Wednesday. 10 miles. Nice long midweek run, I was out the door by 5:30 and back before 7am. Needless to say very happy to have clicked this off at just over a 8:00 pace.

• Thursday. 5.76 miles. Nice and easy on the treadmill.
• Friday. 8.13 miles at race pace (8:35), more on my goal in another post.
• Saturday. off. That was easy!
• Sunday. Forecast was for crazy hot temperatures and so I was on the road by 5:45am! I made a point of getting up early and having breakfast, a cup of tea and let nature take it’s course and that set me up for a solid run. Goal was to average race pace for the run. While the terrain is rolling and there are couple of tasty hills at the beginning and towards the end. I hit it square on! Becca came out to cheer me on in the last mile and that helped with a strong finish. Missing the heat of sun made the run very doable and compared to a couple of long runs ago this was very manageable! A telling sign is how I feel later and while I was a bit tired I think this was more a function of the alarm clock of than the run.

A couple of doozy hills; Mile 2-3 and 16-18.

Very happy with the consistency of the splits for the middle miles.

Sunrise and long shadows!

So the week’s totals;

5 runs, 7:02:16 and 50.15 miles in the bank! This week sees a difference with the long run being split over a back-to-back days so recovery will be important!