8.4 miles, strong finish

I did 8.4 miles today along the Mari­na Green and the Embar­cadero. I split it into three legs, out to the end of the Mari­na Green (plus a trip to the end of the Munic­i­pal Pier) and back, which is 2.7 miles each way, plus an addi­tion­al run out almost to the Fer­ry Build­ing and back, which is an even three miles. There’s one small hill at Fort Mason that I have to hit twice, but it’s most­ly a flat course all around.

I fig­ured that if I could aver­age bet­ter than a nine minute mile on my Twin Peaks five mile course, that I should be able to aver­age an eight minute mile on a most­ly flat run. Well, I hit the split but­ton at the end of the first 2.7 and did some not-so-quick math (math is hard when I’m run­ning) and real­ized I was run­ning a bit behind my tar­get pace. So I tried upping the ener­gy lev­el a bit on the return leg and sure enough, I was still behind my tar­get pace on the sec­ond 2.7. So with three miles to go, I poured on some more steam and pushed through.

It did­n’t feel like I was going much faster through the last leg, but it did seem like it was a hard­er push. And in the last mile, I start­ed get­ting a side-stitch. I hoped that side-stitch­es aren’t actu­al dam­age and pushed on through; that last mile was over-the top push for me.

I fin­ished in 1:06:09, which is an aver­age 7:52 pace. Right on tar­get, EXCELLENT! But look­ing at my split times, it was real­ly the final leg that did it for me. the first leg I com­plet­ed in a 8:16/mile pace, the sec­ond where I thought I was work­ing hard­er an 8:26/mile pace. And the final three miles were done at a 7:00/mile pace. Accord­ing to my heartrate mon­i­tor, my aver­age heartrates for the legs were 170, 179, and 185. Which indi­cates that indeed I was work­ing much hard­er in the sec­ond leg than the first, and a lit­tle bit hard­er in the last than the sec­ond. Draw your own con­clu­sions, because it does­n’t make a lot of sense to me that I would work hard­er to go slow­er on the same course, and then work a lit­tle bit hard­er to go a lot faster.

Regard­less, I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed that I did­n’t sus­tain an eight minute mile for the whole course. If I had it in me to do three miles at sev­en min­utes per mile at the end, I prob­a­bly could have done the whole course a lit­tle bit more evenly.

Still, if I’m going to go at it uneven­ly, this is the way to do it. Start slow to make sure I have the mileage under my belt, then use up what’s left in the end. That strat­e­gy beats burn­ing out ear­ly and then slow­ing down over the whole course. but I can cer­tain­ly use some improve­ment in gaug­ing my pace for the longer runs.

This encour­ages me, too, of course. This is the first time I’ve ever cracked the eight minute mile on a run longer than four miles. It proves I’ve got more in me than I’ve been giv­ing myself cred­it for. And I’m going to need every bit of that “more in me than I’ve been giv­ing myself cred­it for” if I’m going to com­plete a marathon in under 7:30/mile to qual­i­fy for Boston 2006. Oh, did I just admit that’s a goal? I guess now’s as good a time as any to make it an offi­cial declared goal:

To com­plete a sanc­tioned marathon in 7:26/mile before the qual­i­fy­ing dead­line for the 2006 Boston Marathon.

I’ve basi­cal­ly got ten months to get there from here. I’ll need all your support.