Week 9 went down well. The 14-miler on Tuesday was incredibly hard for some reason: I'm guessing mostly due to hot temperatures (80 degrees or so) and very strong headwinds for the second half of the run. I was completely exhausted. Then I had a great 12-miler on Thursday, running it at a 7:25 pace, which felt easy (and this was the Iroquois Park loop, which is hilly).

But the icing on the cake was the long run on Saturday. 17 miles with 10 at marathon pace. I ran the 10 miles at 6:40 average, and pretty even splits (except for the first mile, which was 6:29). Even without the first mile, the average pace was 6:41. The weather was pretty good, though it was raining the whole time.

This suggests that I should be capable of running a 3-hour marathon, and probably keep training at VDOT 55. Though I should run my marathon paced runs at more like 6:50. This is because the goal of a marathon paced run is to practice the pace, and gain some confidence, not anything physiological.

Week 8:
M: 13 MLR
T: 15 MLR
W: 5 R
T: 10 w/ 5 LT
F: 5 R
S: 18 L
Total: 66 miles