it's all downhill from here

12 mile run this morning. 11:13/mi, which is acceptable for a training run, but almost a minute slower than I hope to run the race. The good news is that I got to try out the new finish, and boy is it ever fast! The last mile of the usual course takes you through a series of rolling hills that are murder on every part of your body including your psyche after 9 prior hilly miles. The new last mile takes you down, down, down, down, and then down a little farther.

Today's run I had textbook negative splits for about the first half, and then my splits started creeping back up. Long story short, I took gatorade again (will I never learn?) and at mile 10, even though my legs, heart, and lungs felt fine, I had to screech to a halt and walk for about 5 minutes to avoid unpleasant consequences. Ida walked with me, and we were running again less than a half mile later, but I was not feeling my best. Still, we hit that last mile and without even trying, did it in 9:30.

9:30, people! If I can do that whilst trying not to vomit (or, um, anything else, ahem), at mile 12, then surely I can do that or better at mile 10, with no gatorade on board. Oooooh, I am so liking this. I'm really starting to think hard about my race strategy. I want to run 1:45, which is a 10:30 pace. I think I can actually do significantly faster than that, but I don't want to blow my whole race by going out too fast, and forgetting about the hills in miles 7 and 8 which are killer. But knowing that I've got a super fast last mile, that will allow me to comfortably keep it slow in the beginning, knowing that I can make up a minute or more at the end.

Only two more Saturday runs before the race! Both are 7 miles - the MJH8K plus warmup/cooldown next weekend, and just a straight 7 the week before the race. The past couple of weeks have not been good for me, training wise - I've traveled twice, I've been fighting a cold, and both The Supportive Husband and the kids have been sick. This coming week especially I really want to focus on getting those weekday miles so that I can feel confident that I've prepared as well as can be for the 10 miler.