I survived the monster week, and "survived" sounds like the appropriate word. I felt fine for the 12-miler mid-week, and then the hard part came on Thursday and Saturday.

My Thursday LT run was a bit of a failure. We had serious winds outside, which meant that I had streets where I seriously had to push against strong headwind. You never get that back downwind - almost like elevation changes. I ran 6.6 miles (one neighborhood lap) at a perceived LT pace. I'm not sure how much the splits mean: 6:34, 6:54, 7:02, 7:13, 7:03, 6:47, and the fractional last part in 4:01 at a pace of 6:36. So altogether 45:34 for 6.6 miles, roughly 6:54 pace. That's almost as slow as marathon pace. If 6:54 is my threshold, then Daniels says my marathon is ~3:14. I hope that's not true. I really want to run a 3:!0.

In Saturday, I ran my first 20-miler. This was tough. It was warm outside, and my legs still felt the Thursday run. Also, this run is 3 miles longer than the longest so far. I pushed though the pain and tiredness, and finished the run decently. I tried to check out the course of the marathon, but I missed a turn in the trail, and I got hopelessly lost. So I ended up exploring some other trails. One more tough thing in this run was that I had to carry all my water, which meant that I carried a liter bottle for a while; I stashed it, and picked it up coming back.

It is getting a bit easier from here, though the next 3 weeks is still pretty hard.

Week -4:

Mon: 8 w/ 5x600

Tue: 11 MLR

Wed: Rest

Thu: 4 R w/ 6x100

Fri: 8K-15K race, but I'll probably do 6 miles LT instead with 2/2 wu/cd.

Sat: 17 L

Total: 50 miles