Sara Blabs

I talked the other day about my phenomenal 10 mile strategy run I did on Sunday.  You know, the 3 miles at slow pace, 3 miles at half pace, 3 miles at 10K pace and then final mile at slow pace.  Monday, my hips were aching a little just because I hadn’t gone much further than 7 miles since I ran the Austin 10/20 over a month ago.  So, it was a bit of a surprise when I got home from work Monday night and realized I was actually muscle sore, like I’d had a good, hard gym workout, from my run on Sunday.  But, it makes sense because I ran the run like a workout and not just like a regular run.  When I went out for Monday’s 3.3 mile run, I was doing my warm up dynamic stretches (leg swings) and boy were my hamstrings tight!  But my quads, hammies and abs were ALL sore from Sunday’s run.

Oh, and apparently I didn’t do Sunday’s run as my friend Kirsten meant for me to do it.  What she meant was 3 MINUTES at slow pace, 3 minutes at half pace, 3 minutes at 10K pace, repeat.  Oops.  Oh well.  I really did enjoy the way I did it and plan to repeat the way I did it of future long runs.

Monday’s run, I went for a progressive run again.  When I started the temp was fine, however, by the time I had completed mile 2, it was getting warm and, even with water, I needed to take short rest breaks that final full mile.  But, I did 10:36 first mile, 10:29 second mile and 9:36 third mile, then I did the final .3 at about an 11:30 pace to cool down.  At one point during the third mile, I looked down and I was going along at about an 8:45 pace!  And it didn’t even “feel” fast.  Haha!

As I was looking through my Facebook feed before work on Monday and one of the pages I follow had posted a question about GPS watches.  Someone had replied about that they love their Garmin Forerunner 10 (which is the one I’m currently using) but that it only has a 5 hour battery life (I did not know this).  Someone else recommended the Garmin 310XT and stated that it has a 20 hour battery life!  And it’s only about $170 on Amazon!  So…since I’m planning on my first full marathon in December and I’m pretty sure it’s going to take me at least 5.5 hours to complete, the 10 is just not going to do it for me.  So, after I’ve gotten everything settled after I return from my roadtrip, I will be buying the 310XT.  Also, now that I’m trying to pace out each mile, it would be very helpful to have my pace and my distance displayed on the same screen and not to have to toggle between different screens on my watch to see both.  The 10 makes me toggle but the 310XT displays everything on the same screen.

This morning's run was great!  Just 3 miles, but it was progressive.  My splits were 10:58, 10:33 and 10:04.  And guess what!  The final mile was the easiest mile!  I don't know why but it's significantly more difficult for me to hold a slower pace than a faster one.