On Sunday I had my first actual long run. Seven miles. That’s 11.26 kilometers for everyone else. Coach/Grandfather Jeff Galloway marked it as an “Easy Long Run,” and boy did I treat it as such.
Obviously the Garmin text is white on a mostly white background and I can’t change it at all, of course. The text below reads: 7.54mi distance, 1:49:50 time, 14:34/mi pace.
I’ve wanted to run this loop around the river for a long time, from the Steel Bridge in the north to the Tilikum Bridge in the south. I’ve walked portions of it many times over, but never done the whole thing.
According to Coach Jeff, the pace on this is meant to be 3-4 minutes below race pace. That is delving into walking territory for me, and I didn’t want to walk the entire thing. And I didn’t walk the entire thing, but I did run as slow as felt comfortable. In fact, about 3/4ths of my time on this run was running, which is wild to me because I certainly felt like I was walking a lot. But I expected to walk a lot; it is an easy run, after all, and walking is the easiest running you can do.
So, I woke up and made some oats for breakfast. Basically the day before I went out for a smashburger and ended up eating too much or eating something that didn’t sit right and my stomach was killing me the rest of the day. I also think I sort of crashed for the day in general–after parkrun and burger, I was toast. This all made me nervous Sunday morning, as I wasn’t sure if I was physically ready to take on such a long run. Was my stomach going to betray me?
After consuming oats I sat around for about 45 minutes to let them digest a bit. I used the bathroom. I also made a l’il sports drink by adding a teaspoon of sugar to my water bottle. I had researched this the night before because I was just curious. Water good; sugar good. Sugar water good? Turns out it is, more or less. Funny thing though is that lightly sugared water does not taste very good. Maybe add some lemon juice next time, make a lemonade.
Then, I was off. My stomach was a little iffy at the start, but once I got into it my stomach settled and I was fine for the rest of the entire run. I had to stop a couple of times to stretch my feet out because they were going numb early on. Not sure why that’s happening or how I can fix it before running. Other than that, it was a mix of running and walking, with a light drizzle rain at first and nice, cool weather throughout.
I wore a cotton shirt for the run and yes my nipples hurt when I got home, thank you for asking. It’s funny how they don’t hurt when you’re running but once you’re done, boy howdy. I guess it’s time to start putting band aids on my nipples for longer runs.
The only real thing of interest I saw as I was running was a photo shoot with a very scantily clad woman next to OMSI. There was a homeless guy pushing a shopping cart a few feet away getting a good show.
My mile splits were shockingly regular:
I think mile 3 has an extra minute because that’s when I stopped a bunch to get my feet unnumbed. Otherwise, steady pace, which is so surreal considering I wasn’t actively checking pace other than when I felt like I should slow down, and I was walking a bunch.
The most important part, perhaps, for my future 10k training is that my time for my 10k on this run, according to Strava, was 1:28:43, which is a little more than a minute faster than my B Goal time for my 10k, which is 1:30. Now, according to Garmin, my fasted 10k time was my first training session of the week (Goal Pace Repeats), which ended up being 1:21:53. That wasn’t as much of a “slow” run however and included a mile where I just ran all out.
Garmin Coach has a “Confidence” rating based on your progress and mine is creeping dangerously into “lets bump up your goal time” territory.
I have a feeling this week will be a bump up, maybe to 1:10. 1:15 to 1:10 is a difference between a 12:04/mi pace and an 11:16/mi pace, which is insane to me. But I’ll take it, Jeff Daddy!
This week in training are hills, speeds, and goal pace. Speed has been bumped up from 6x 800m to 8x800m, which feels very much like they are testing my pace for a potential bump up. I guess we’ll know by the end of the week!
Oh and I have another 5k, the Cinco de Mayo, on Saturday. At least I won’t have two long runs this week!
