5 Mile run (MM) - 4/4

I never had a chance to run on Thursday, as I was flying back from Arkansas. My original idea of running Friday instead never came to fruition because I was busy with other life stuff (test driving a car, etc).

So it was probably a good thing that this weekends run was only 5 miles. The Galloway plan does the long runs during the weekend, but initially they are every other week. Once the long runs get to the 13 mile mark, or so, they are every three weeks. Since there was a 9 mile run last week, this weeks run is a tad shorter, so that things can be fully recovered by the time next weeks 11 miler rolls around.

Just for the heck of it, I decided to do a magic mile during todays run. There are weeks in the schedule where these MM's are slotted in, but I kinda wanted to get an idea of my timing at the beginning of the training. The last one I did was in the fall, so while it gave me a general ballpark of what I could expect, too many things have changed between then and now to make it accurate.

Total Distance: 5.25 miles
Leg 1 (2 miles): 17:16 Avg HR: 151
Leg 2 (1 mile/MM): 7:25 Avg HR: 175
Leg 3 (2.25 miles): 22:54 Avg HR: 157

My last MM was at the end of October, where I clocked a 7:01 with a HR of 179. I recall during the last one that I started off too fast, because the latter half of the mile I had to slow down. That is probably part of the reason why the avg HR was 179 - once you get into the anaerobic zone, it takes a long time for the body to transition back. With that in mind, I tried to keep a more constant pace this time around. I felt like I accomplished that - but I think I could have pushed it a bit harder. You are supposed to do these magic miles at a hard enough pace that you don't feel you can maintain the pace for even another 100 yds. Finding that pace in the beginning is very difficult.

Anyway - with a MM of 7:25, the predicted marathon pace (at a hard effort) would be 1.3 times 7:25 - or 9:38 min/mile, or about 4 hours and 12 minutes. Not where I want to be - but I got 6 months to knock about 45 minutes, which translates to a MM of about 6 minutes. Yikes!