Sunday: 14 Miles Monday: 4 + 6 miles

Sunday: 14 miles @ 7:26/mile pace.

Rain and warm temperatures made for a muddy and interesting run.  Since I will be one of two marathon pacers leading a 3 hour 20 minute group, I decided to dedicate about 1 long run a month to hitting even 7:38 miles to practice the required pace.  I have until 12 days after the Boston Marathon to get it right, and this run shows I certainly need some work!

Splits: 7:59; 7:22; 7:20; 7:31; 7:29; 7:30; 7:26; 7:41; 7:29; 7:21; 7:22; 7:23; 7:19; 7:09

Running just a couple of long runs slower will probably do some good for me in the grand scheme of things.  I usually do my long runs as progression runs, ending up at or faster than marathon pace by the end, which certainly increases my chances for injury.  At least a couple of these easier efforts should provide insurance, and help me to make sure I pace well enough to get invited back to pace again!  It also felt good to take it easy after my 5K effort from Saturday.


Monday:
AM: 4 miles moderate pace.  Back to cold and windy winter weather
PM: 6 miles, 39:23, 6:34/mile pace

My knee pain has continued to be on and off throughout the day.  I can only describe it as stiffness that I feel more in the morning than the evening, and especially feel it if I kneel down.  After about 1-5 minutes of running, it completely disappears.  By the evening, it felt much better.

I've got some soreness in my left hip also, which is a bit concerning.  I've had on again, off again pain in various parts of my left leg since May; this particular pain completely disappears while running.  I really only feel it standing around or when I start worrying about it too much.

I'm fortunate that there have only been a total of about 3-4 days in my entire running life that I was actually in too much pain from an injury to run, and both were "acute" types of injuries.  It certainly doesn't make all these nagging blips any less annoying!  I'll keep an eye on it; hopefully once my mileage climbs up and I start feeling sore more often, everything will just kind of mesh into one general dull ache like it did in 2010.