So Fast, I Barely Got Wet

It was another cold, rainy day here in Appleton. Depending on which electronic billboard is most accurate, the temperature was somewhere between 45 and 50F. It was raining off and on, and the one good note was that the wind was minimal.

Given the continuing rain, I dropped the brick and decided to try a new running loop. I also left the running computer at home, and went with just the stopwatch. That may have been a really good idea.

The new loop was simply a variation on the 10 mile loop used for most my long runs. By going a few streets further before a couple of the turns, it became a 12.15 mile loop. That is a bit of an approximation, as MapMyRun was missing one street, and I had to "run" through a field. It should still be pretty close.

One section of the run goes over part of the Fox Cities Marathon route (going backward from mile 10 to mile 8). I was a bit surprised when I hit those marks, because things were going so well. From miles 10 to 9, my pace was 8m 45s. From 9 to 8, that dropped to about 8m 30s. I was surprised I still had that much left in my legs, as that was around the 9 mile mark in my run. And it didn't feel I was running that much faster over those two miles.

When I got home and calculated everything out, I found the cause for that. I ran the 12.15 miles in just over 1 hour 46 minutes. Calculated out, that was an average pace of 8m 45s. Just to keep everyone on track, that is fairly well blazing for this runner over any good distance. And that carrying a bunch of extra water weight.

That bodes very well for the Green Bay half-marathon, next Sunday. If the weather is roughly comparable, race day magic should help me get that pace down even a bit more. It would be awesome to finish down around the 8m 30s mark. It's a stretch, but would set a great foundation for breaking the four hour mark at the Fox Cities Marathon in September.

By the way, just for Iron Wil, I followed the run with an ice bath, which Toddler Pol found immensely funny.