Another long run done, and my highest mileage week to date!

Like the good girl that I am, I got up before dawn this morning to get my 14 mile long run done.  We had too much other stuff going on during the day to do it later, and it's so nice to have Sunday free as a full rest day.  I got up to the reservoir just as it was starting to get light, and good thing, too, since ALL the streetlights were out on one side.  It was a bit disconcerting,  but interesting to see just how much natural light there was around 6:30am.  I think the snow helped.  The run itself was uneventful, and only noteworthy because it was so pleasant.  As usual, the first three miles were pretty slow - between 10:55 and 10:40 - and after that the pace just kind of took off.  I spent at least 3-6 miles in the 10:35 range, and the last 3 miles, at least, were sub-10 minute miles for the most part.  I have no idea what this pattern means, but it seems to repeat with pretty much every long run.  Today's pace was only 1 second per mile off of last week's at 10:29.  Really, that's still a little fast according to the McMillan pace calculator, but it makes the 10:20 pace of the 4:30 full marathon group seem that much more doable.  Yes, I obviously know that there's a big difference between 14 miles and 26.2, and trust me, given how my last marathon went down, I know that for me, it's kind of up in the air what's going to happen after mile 15.  At the very least, I think I can pull out a decent pace for the 15 mile race I've got towards the end of the month.  I might try doing it at 4:20 marathon pace and see how that goes down.  If it's pretty easy, then I'll know that the 9:56 pace that a 4:20 marathon requires might be doable.  If it's wicked hard, then I'll know that a 4:20 finish isn't going to happen this time.

Today's run brings my weekly mileage total to 36.4 miles, my highest mileage week to date.  From now on out, every week that my mileage increases will be a new high.  Haakan's plan has me topping out at 50 mpw and doing not one, but TWO 22 mile runs.  One of those might get dropped if I get sick, or if the 20 milers are particularly horrendous, but we'll see.  I've been lucky so far in terms of illness, maybe my luck will hold.

I was disturbed this morning to find that my Garmin was apparently dead, even though it was fine last night as I was downloading all my runs and clearing it's full memory.  I stole Haakan's for my run, since I wasn't going to do 14 miles without anything to help me with my pace (yes, I rely too much on it, I'm sure there's something deep and existential in there), but I spend a lot of my run thinking about what I would do if I had to replace it, if I'd get something different instead or just try to get it fixed, etc.  Luckily, a friend online advised me to do a "hard reset" on it, and that worked!  So if your Garmin ever locks up or won't turn on, try a hard reset (and if you Google that, you'll find out there are a couple of ways to do that, and a "soft reset", too).

I'm thinking of doing some fit reviews of the running gear that I use all the time, is that anything that those who read this blog would be interested in seeing?  Let me know in the comments and I'll start doing a review with pictures maybe once a week.