Marathon Training: Week 6

I know I skipped weeks 4 and 5... but basically- it snowed.  I did a few runs on the treadmill.  That's about it.  Nothing exciting to report.

Let's move on to week 6- a personal distance record!
That's right- I ran 15 miles today.
But let's back up to the week of training leading up to the long run.

Monday- You know you've been training in dang cold weather when you wake up, see 39 degrees is the temp and get excited about how warm it is!  We did 6 miles, a 1 mile warm-up, 4 miles of fartleks (speed intervals that are crazy hard!) and 1 mile cool down.  My goal was to run as hard as I possibly could for those 1/4 mile intervals.  I averaged in the 7's for them.  Crazy.

Wednesday- Carrie was back!  I hadn't got to run with her in a couple of weeks and had seriously missed my running buddy!  We had a 6 mile tempo run on the schedule.  The 3 miles we did in tempo were 8:20, 8:10 and 8:03.  It was a great run, and I left feeling stronger and more confident about the 15 miler on the schedule for this weekend.

Saturday- Today marked a new personal distance record for me!  I woke up to 60 degrees and 90% humidity.  After running in freezing temps, I was a sweaty mess by the end of the first few miles.  Carrie and I met early and did 5 miles before meeting up with the rest of the group for 10.  This was a hilly course, and a few times, I kind of wanted to cry.  But we pushed through and ended up with a great time.

Long Run #6: 15 Miles
Average Pace: 9:13
Total Time: 2:18:29

Mile #1:   9:50 (SUPER dark out)
Mile #2:   9:03
Mile #3:   9:25
Mile #4:   9:28
Mile #5:   9:18
Mile #6:   9:13
Mile #7:   9:12
Mile #8:   9:13
Mile #9:   9:24
Mile #10: 8:52
Mile #11: 8:57
Mile #12: 9:06
Mile #13: 9:05 (smashed half marathon PR)
Mile #14: 9:10
Mile #15: 8:53

Overall, it was an amazing week.  Our mileage continues to move on up and I'm going to be setting new distance records every week.  Hopefully we're through with snowstorms and negative degree temps.  Today, although it was humid, was great weather!  Now I need to go take a nap and recover...