This one hurt. (23mile 3x5 lab)

3 sets of 5 miles

loop1 - loop2 - loop3

6:43 -- 6:42 -- 6:45 

6:42 -- 6:51 -- 6:43

6:43 -- 6:42 -- 7:04

6:56 -- 6:50 -- 6:48

7:02 -- 7:00 -- 7:03

6:48 -- 6:47 -- 6:37

34:06 - 34:02 - 34:07

Goal: 34:10 5 milers 

Overall Goal: 6:50 pace -- 1hr 42min 30sec, 15miles

Final result:   6:49 pace --  1hr 42min 15sec, 15 miles 

• 4 mile warmup
  
• 3loops x 5miles (15 miles) at Marathon Goal Pace of 6:50 (2:59:00 marathon) with 2 mins forced downtime in between to cause lactic acid buildup. 
  
• 4 mile warmdown
  

This one hurt.  I'm not going to sugarcoat it.  My legs were tired from what is easily one of the hardest 3 weeks of running I've ever put together.  I wasn't sure I was going to be able to run my marathon goal pace for 15 miles, but i tried to surround myself with positive thinking all week long, and publicly stated in our team forum that I would hit my goal.  Nothing like a little pressure on yourself to help push you and not give up when things got tough!

The 4 mile warmup was slow and easy... 34 mins, so about 8:30pace.  I deliberately went super easy, but that in turn affected my foot and my plantars was screaming at me for going too slow after 3 miles.  I knew I could hit 2 loops at pace, but honestly expected to cave in, somewhere on the third loop, simply for lacking leg power this late in the week.  The mile marker cones were a little off position, but I wasn't concerned about every mile's split.  What I wanted was to hit my overall 5 mile times, and the overall times I was looking for.

The weather was warm and humid. (68-70ish, with a good 85% humidity or so). It's always tough to run your first warm and humid run of the season, because your body simply hates it. Heck, I remember last year, I ran my first HEAT 18 miler with Lex, Julie, Jennifer and Christine where the heat affected me sooo bad I had to sit down on the curb after 14 miles, and felt like I was going to faint the entire run death shuffle home.  This wasn't a super hot day, but it was humid.  Once we got to about mile 1.5 of the 2nd loop, I told Jason who was the only one next to me, that I finally felt like i was hitting my stride, getting into a groove, feeling like my running was easy, running relaxed and smooth.  The prior 6 miles had been a struggle, the pace felt ridiculously fast, and there's now way I would have finished had I not felt better when i did.   He had also found his grove so we were running relaxed, and had locked in to a nice pace.  Charles caught up with us around mile 2.5 and we all three just motored home the second loop.  

Third loop.  After a 2 min forced rest, My legs were definitely not the spunky light legs they had been for the last 4 miles.  However, I quickly set in to pace, making sure we were hitting the splits we needed along mile one at certain markers I had identified in the prior two loop starts.  (it's hard to get back in to pace, but I knew the results of Mile 1 and 6, as I had 3 posts along the course where I knew the splits we needed.  (hence the very similar splits for those 3 miles).  I'm pretty sneaky smart, huh!?

3rd loop got rough, no sense in lying.  Charles lost some ground to us, and Jason and I did all we could to keep each other motivated.  "5k left, anyone can run a 5k"  "you know we're going to nail this loop, right?!"  "Only a two mile time trial to go" "800 meters"   It was hard.  My legs were pretty fried, but I knew that the mind can force the pace if you want it to, and so, after a painful last hill climb, we grinded out that last mile and finished 15 seconds fast overall.  Seeing that we ran 15 miles, this means it averages out to running 1 second too fast for the entire 15 miles.  1 second!  That's OUTSTANDING!

P.S. My Plantars subsided after about a 1/4 mile of running faster, then came back with about 3 miles to go in our warmdown run back to the cars.  It was literally screaming at me while i was in line at central market's cafe, but it's much better now after some ice...  I'll roll my golf ball while watching TV later.  It seems like I'm simply not allowed to run slower than 8min miles.

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Next week's a little bit easier week with Ruth's Ladder and some tempo work, so the uber tough Soulbuster on Sunday will hopefully be a success too. 

Today's success was all about the mind, hardly about the legs, fitness, nutrition and hydration for me.  I learned a great deal about how positive visualization several days before and then how a positive attitude, and letting everything else in life not matter, makes a world of difference in your performance. 

If you can't find the happiness in your running, you should try less harder.  The happy stuff is usually the simple stuff.  Sometimes you just dig too deep looking for it, when all you need to do is skim the surface.  It makes all the difference in the world. 

Happy Running!