Easily running up a 60-mile week

So, yesterday I promised myself (after a tongue lashing from my coach) that I would run my easy and long runs easy.

This morning, I met with two other runners (Blair from Fort Worth and Muna) at Town Lake for an "easy" 7-miler. I was actually looking forward to the easy part because my legs were kind of beat up from Tuesday's 10-mile, 7:40 pace run. And because I normally take Wednesday's off, I knew there was no way I was going to want to pick up the pace. So a day like today would be, for me, the best day to start practicing the correct paces to run on my easy days.

After a 10-minute-mile for Mile 1 .... Let me repeat that: Mile 1 took 10 minutes to complete. ... We wound up doing the entire 7 miles in 1:05:20, a pace of about 9:19. Not one mile was under 9.

Not only could I pass the talk test, I could have said supercalifragilisticexpialidocious backwards and not been out of breath.

Blair, who knows my running history pretty well, said, "Kevin, I bet you haven't run this slow in a while." Blair is a 3:15 marathoner. Muna, whom I just met this morning, is a former president of the Austin Runners club and has run 9 marathons and qualified for Boston several times. Both are "smart runners" and know when to take it easy, and they haven't lost their speed at all.

Still, even though it was an "easy run" it felt hard. I could never get my stride right. It also didn't help that I drank three glasses of wine Tuesday night. (Like I said, I usually take Wednesdays off but Blair emailed me late and asked if I wanted to run with him after I was already planning to drink the wine. Hey, you can't just change your wine-drinking plans midday.)

Because I ran on my usual day off, my mileage over the last 7 days is 64.

I have never ever ever ever never run 60-plus miles in any 7 day period. But I guess, I'm slowly learning, that when you take it easy, you can run as many miles as you want without injuring yourself.