Week #7 - Day 4

I'm halfway there. I completed my own personal half-marathon this morning, doing about 13.1 miles on the towpath. The plan had called for only 12 miles, but since I had totally missed run #3 for this week, I decided to tack on the extra mile and change (not to metnion it was a big mental boost to know I've reached this landmark). I used my heart monitor and tried to stay around the 75-80% range for most of the run (though I think my max is a little higher than average, so it was probably more around 70-75%). I finshed the 13 miles in 2:09:20 (a 9:57 mile pace). This is about a 9 second improvement over last week's long run. I think the weather really helped this week since it was a little cooler and a lot lower humidity. I really felt good most of the run until the last 2 miles or so when I started to just get tired. My knees have been bothering me, but I hope they can recover and make it through a couple more months.

I'm always pretty much halfway through my 16-week training program (before you fault my math, let me explain). After week 14, the last two weeks are "taper" weeks, where I cut back and basically that last week I'm down to a few 3 milers and some walking before the marathon at the end of the week. So I'm halfway through the hard stuff. Only 5 miles from the most I'm scheduled to do before the marathon (though I am considering adding a couple miles to one of the 18 milers and going for 20). 61 days and change until the Akron Marathon!