Sunday, March 10, 2013

The Mile Two Slump

Another week of training is complete and now there are only 11 weeks left to get ready for Buffalo. I almost stuck to my actual training plan this week, but sometimes teaching just gets in the way of marathon training. The only thing that I missed this week was one of my 3 mile runs. I did not even feel slightly guilty about skipping a 3 miler because the longer runs are way more important. I know that missing a shorter run here or there will not affect my training too much, especially because I have such a solid base built already. I know that the long runs are the most important part of training right now so I headed out for a run this morning with the goal of 12 miles in mind. I am really supposed to be at 13 miles this week, but I had only run 10 miles last week so I figured that I should not push it too much. I met up with some coworkers this morning who are training for the Bridge Run half marathon and only needed to run 7 miles this morning. We all trained together for the Bridge Run last spring and were averaging a pace of somewhere between 10:30-11:00 minute miles. This morning we ran 7 miles in 1:10:05, which is a 10:01 min/mi pace. It's amazing how far we have all come as runners over the past year. Since I am the only person crazy enough to be training for a marathon right now, I continued the rest of the run by myself. It was wonderful to have people to run the first 7 miles with and it made the time go by much more quickly. By the time that I got to 12 miles, I was feeling really good so I decided that 1 more mile was possible. I am not only right back to where I need to be in my marathon training, but I also shaved 9 minutes off of my fastest half marathon time this morning. I would definitely say that this was a pretty solid week of marathon training and the times below definitely show how much my pace has improved.

Week 19 
3/5/13 - 3.1 miles in 28:42 (9:15 min/mi pace)
3/8/13 - 6 miles in 59:07 (9:51 min/mi pace)
3/10/13 - 13.1 miles in 2:08:08 (9:47 min/mi pace)

One of the things that we talked about during our run this morning was how much better a long run feels than a short run. I like to refer to this problem as the mile two slump. Some of my worst runs have been a 2 or 3 mile run. I don't know how other runners are, but I find it incredibly difficult to find and maintain a pace that I am comfortable with until I am about 3 or 4 miles into a run. I have had so many runs where I was ready to quit around mile 2 and the beginner runner version of myself would have quit. I usually feel so sluggish and unhappy with my pace around mile two and wonder to myself how much longer will it be until I am done with my run. It is amazing how much better I feel after I go a couple more miles and really get into my own running groove. I really dislike mile two and I think that there are so many different possible reasons for this. Sometimes I go out way too hard and fast and use up all of my energy on that first mile or two. Sometimes I go out way too slow in an effort to pace myself and I can never quite get my pace as fast as I want. When I was a beginner runner, I was extremely guilty of starting out way too fast all of the time and then I could never maintain my starting pace. Now that I am a more experienced runner, I usually start out a run pretty slow. I love starting races in the back of the pack and starting out with a slow pace. If I start out slow, then I have the energy to increase my speed slowly throughout my run until I get to the pace that I want. One of the best things about this strategy is the fact that I get to pass so many runners who go out way too hard or too fast. I have been using the MapMy Run app on my iPhone whenever I go out for a run and it really helps me to pace myself. I usually have the voice feedback turned on for every 0.5 miles so I can keep being reminded of my pace and seeing if I need to adjust my speed at all. This morning I decided to turn off the voice feedback because I did not want to hear my progress 26 times this morning. I actually maintained a pretty consistent pace throughout my run this morning. I think that my body is finally to the point now that I can pace myself pretty well without being reminded of my own pace every half mile. I was looking at some of my splits from the past few runs and my pace for mile two is usually way off from my pace for the rest of my run. I am beginning to become even more confident in my ability to run a marathon in a couple months and I refuse to let the mile two slump get in my way.

238.7 miles complete in 36:49:31 and only 76 days until conquering 26.2 miles!

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