Detroit Marathon Training - Week 12 - Run #1

After slacking for the past few days, I managed to finally get my first run of the week in this afternoon. After work, I headed downstairs to the gym and hit up the treadmill for an 8 miler (which is about the max for what I can handle on a treadmill before wanting to kill myself out of boredom).

The run actually went pretty good, besides the boredom that is. I started off at an 8:20 pace (again, trying to emulate a realistic marathon pace) and did that for 4 miles before upping it to 8:13 for a couple of miles, and then to 8:06 for mile 6 & 7, and then down under 8 for most of the eighth and final mile.

I did learn one thing today. The gym's treadmill stops after 60 minutes. Fortunately, I was able to get in an extra 5 minutes during the "cooldown" cycle, but my time ran out at the 7.9 mile mark (65 minutes), so I had to stop, restart and finish the last tenth of a mile, which took about 49 seconds (most of which was spent ramping back up to speed). So that was pretty dumb.

So yeah, 8 miles in 65:49, which averages out to a little under an 8:14 per mile average pace (which would be a 3:36 marathon, which I would love, but it's late and I think that is the sign to go to bed because I must have started dreaming).