Marathon of Marathons

In two weeks I run the ZombieRunner Bay Trail Marathon....the start of my "marathon of marathons": 

7 weeks after is Surf City, which  completes our "California Dreamin' Racing series (San Fran, Long Beach, Surf City) and get our cool schwag (jacket and medal).

About 5 weeks after is the LA Marathon (hopefully with running with Charlie)

....and then perhaps Skyline to the sea and then Copenhagen (not signed up for them, yet). 

Am I crazy?


I don't think so: I don't plan on running any of these races all-out, obviously. I'll probably do them in the 9:40-10:10 range which is easy run pace for me. (Don't get me wrong though, runs over 16 miles are never 'easy')



This Sunday was the  final long run before the first marathon in the series.....the weather forecast was not good, and if I was rained out it meant getting up really really  early on Monday to get the run in before work.


I woke up at about 630am and stared out the window and saw a clear sky with dawn starting... venus aka "the morning star" was shining brightly saying: "Paul, come out and RUN! 8)"


Out the door at 6:50am and ran 21 miles in the dawn and then clear sunny sky. Temps started cold  but as soon as the sun cleared the hills it got up into the sixties. I started slowly and gradually chopped down the average pace to 9:35min/mile.


At mile 19 I hopped on the Paly track and banged out an 8:24 mile, which felt good. Then I took it easy for the final 2 mile jog home. 

Here are my splits:

mile:     1  pace:     10:17
mile:     2  pace:      9:53
mile:     3  pace:      9:51
mile:     4  pace:      9:57
 cumulative @ mile:     5  pace:      9:59
mile:     5  pace:      9:59
mile:     6  pace:     10:02
mile:     7  pace:      9:44
mile:     8  pace:      9:32
mile:     9  pace:      9:21
 cumulative @ mile:     10  pace:      9:50
mile:     10  pace:      9:21
mile:     11  pace:      9:31
mile:     12  pace:      9:18
mile:     13  pace:      9:27
mile:     14  pace:      9:22
 cumulative @ mile:     15  pace:      9:41
mile:     15  pace:      9:36
mile:     16  pace:      9:34
mile:     17  pace:      9:30
mile:     18  pace:      9:13
mile:     19  pace:      8:24  (Paly track)
 cumulative @ mile:     20  pace:      9:34
mile:     20  pace:      9:07
mile:     21  pace:     10:38
 cumulative @ mile:     21.0  pace:      9:35


3hr 22 min


The rain showed up later, but I was already happy with the morning's results. I refueled by eating a wonderful lunch of homemade vegetarian Indian Dhosas at a friend's house and then some super chicken-roasted leek pasta for dinner at another friends house. How great is that? Yum!

I have not logged many miles (about 40) in the last month so I was kinda curious what my fitness level was...as suspected I'm not at my peak but I've still got plenty of endurance...I felt I could have easily extended this run to a full 26.2 in 4:15-4:25.


Now starts 2 weeks of 'taper'...but...it's really not a taper since I was already tapered ;)

The earlier part  of this week went well with 18 miles of running, 5 miles of walking, 40 minutes of biking and 60 minutes of core/upper workout time.


The biking is good..doing about an hour a week at a medium hard pace..but it's been messing with my leg muscles quite a bit...something is going on but not sure if it's good or bad yet.