The Road To 2012 NYC Marathon – Summary of T-4 Week

Week 13 of training – final week of really long runs – 5, 8, 5, 18.  Or so the plan said.  I completely missed my second 5 miler due to cold and work.  Woke up Friday and was not going anywhere initially since breathing was a challenge and I ached everywhere.  I would have gone later once I was feeling at least semi-decent, but work interfered.

In the end, the day off helped tho – I racked up a great pace on my 18 miler.  And I was kind of in the mood for it too (knowing it was my last training 18 miler helped too), especially compared to last week‘s not in the mood..  All in all, my final long run was my fastest.  Pretty pleased.

Especially since I forgot my various knee straps.  I was initially panicked about it since it was my last 18 miler from the last shot at the program is where I hurt my knee in the first place.  I also think I learned a bit more about why that happened since it was a little close this time too (thankfully, I’m a stronger runner now).  Like the last time I did my final 18 miler, I did my extensions loops both at the beginning of the run (my trail is about 14 miles so I need to run a little extension either at end / beginning or both to get it to 16 or 18 miles), instead of one at beginning and one at end (like last week).  This pushes some pretty steep hills a few more miles later into the run – around the 10 – 13 mile mark instead of the 8-11 mark.  I could definitely feel the difference.  I took it a little easier on those sections and made it through.

Next two weeks are taper weeks before the final week.

Metric	Last Week	In Total
Mileage Run:	32.95 miles	942.33 miles
Longest Run:	18.52 miles	18.52 miles
Longest Run Time:	2:44:28 hh:mm:ss	2:44:28 hh:mm:ss
Longest Run Pace:	8:53 min/mile	8:53 min/mile

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