Steady state run: Comfortably harder than hard.

Ok, back to regularly scheduled programming....

Today (Thursday) was our first "quality" day in our Team Rogue marathon training.

We were supposed to do a warm-up, followed by a 7-mile steady state run, then cool down the last 1 plus miles. Yippee. We finally got the green light to run hard.
(This run would be the first this month where my average pace for the entire run was faster than an 8-minute mile. I was getting used to taking it easy on runs and liking it!)

Our coach, who also happens to be the women's cross country coach at the University of Texas, told us not to run this steady-state run too fast. Run by feel, he said, and if you just have to look at your watch/Garmin, don't run faster than marathon pace.

I kept my effort honest. It was a little bit harder than comfortably hard, But I think that's because the course was not flat at all. There were a lot of little rolling hills, so I could never really get comfortable, so even though my effort was consistent, my paces during the steady-state portion of the run were not consistent.

Here are the splits of those miles during Thursday's steady state portion of the run..

1 - 7:12 (Coach told us to start fast, then ease up)
2 - 7:26
3 - 7:33 (As you can see, I'm easing up)
4 - 7:15 (Was kind of down hill)
5 - 7:24
6 - 7:23
7 - 7:21 (Time was actually 6:38 in 9/10ths of a mile. Quick math means my pace was 7:21 for the mile)

So, my average pace for the steady state was 7:22. That's actually faster than the 7:30 pace I meant to hold on to. It felt pretty hard the whole way, but I don't think I overdid anything. I've run faster paces for longer distances, so it's just about getting my body used to running hard again. And, its about being able to run hard in the middle of a 60-mile week, as opposed to running hard in the middle of a 35 to 40 mile week.

There's a big difference, and I'm becoming more and more aware of it.