Compartmentalizing Long Runs

Against my better judgement, I decided to move my long run up one day and knock it out early in the weekend. This wouldn't have been such a bad idea had I not parlayed the Booth Happy Hour into a night out. Still, I was mostly functional this morning and was in good enough condition to attempt a long run. 16 miles sucks no matter how you slice it, but since it gets really annoying counting down 16 miles on my Garmin, I decided to compartmentalize the run into four parts/four miles each. My goal was to negative split each block.

Once again I headed south on Lakeshore Drive. I wasn't sure how my body would be feeling after last night, but I settled right into 6:40's and decided that would be a good starting point. I breezed through the first four miles in 26:37 (6:39 average), which felt easy enough to lower my target for the next 4 mile block to 6:20-6:30 range. I ended up running 25:36 over the next four miles (6:24 average) but had a few issues come up. My stomach was hating me from last night so fortunately I found a bathroom. I was also incredibly dehydrated but fortunately there are dozens of water fountains along Lakeshore Drive. Also, around mile 7 I had a little sharp stitch in my left achilles, which I immediately stopped to stretch out for a minute. Fortunately that went away.

At the 8 mile turnaround, I had lost so much water weight I couldn't help but go faster. Heading north back to the city is also encouraging because you can see the target from 8-10 miles out, whereas going south, the path seems to never end. The pace continued to quicken and I actually had to hold myself back over the next four miles so I would have something left to lift the last block. The target for block 3 was 6:10-6:20 pace, and it ended up being 24:45 (or 6:11 average). With four to go I allowed my body to pick up the pace. The little aches I had earlier in the run were no longer bothering me and block 4 flew by in 23:50 (5:57 average) with the last three miles all sub 6 minutes.

I'm feeling pretty good all things considered. I'm not looking forward to 18 next week and building on that, but good start to the longer long runs. Today's total: 1:40, 16 miles.