LiveSTRONG Seattle Marathon training week 18 - crushing it

A quick hello everyone!  If you're like us, you have a busy week with Easter-related activities.  I do hope that you all have a great time attending church, spending time with family and the likes.  We're gearing up for a pretty full but enjoyable day tomorrow.  But in the meantime, I managed to sneak in my long run this morning... and it went amazing!


I started out a bit too fast... blasting through the first couple of miles in a 8:50-9:10ish pace.  When I tried to slow down for mile 3 in 9:15, I decided it might be fun to see how long I could sustain the goal pace of 9:09 that would allow me to break 4 hours in the marathon.  Well, at the 14 mile mark, I stopped the Nike+/iPod combination at 2:07:06, which for 14.01 miles put me at a hair over a 9:04 pace.  Wow!


Now there's a BIG difference between running 9:04 for 14 miles and keeping up sub-9:09 for 26.2, but we'll see how it goes as the training evolves.  Hopefully the dietary changes are helping out with that as well, not only dropping a few pounds here and there, but giving me more energy.


In brief, week 18 (out of 30 - only 12 more to go!) turned out to be a pretty good week:

• 22.35 miles on the trainer in 1:15:06
• 17.12 miles running in 2:34:49
• Weight down a hair to 193.4

That's all for now... time to go shower up and enjoy an afternoon of light errands with my amazing wife!  I do hope that you all have a blessed Easter tomorrow.

Until next time, onward...