Murderous Marathon Training #1

Saturday was the first in the series of increasingly long runs, designed to get me ready for the 3-4 hours of running I'll be doing in the Marathon.

This first run was a 14-mile out-and-back course through the woods behind Tussey. It's starts out with a 3.2 mile uphill, which I did in about 30 minutes. The next 4 miles are pretty steadily downhill. That too I did in about 30 minutes, so at the turn-around I was at 1 hour even. So, then I had to turn around, and those 4 miles I had just run down I now had to run back up. That hurt, but there was never a doubt that I could make it. I was mighty happy to see the top of that though: that section took me just under 40 minutes. So finally it was 3.2 miles down, and even though I had already gone 11 miles, a felt strong running. I crushed that section in 23 minutes, which is very fast for me.

That was the longest run I'd every attempted, and I completed it in 2 hours, 4 minutes. That's just slightly slower than my half-marathon pace from last year, but it was also a much harder run.