Last Saturday, I managed to get my first 10 mile run in.
How did it go?
It went well, I knew I was going to be running 10 miles when I left the house so it was good to have that psychologically in my mind because I knew I would need to manage my breathing.
The way I went about that is to force myself to only breathe through my nose for the first 6 miles at minimum. This way I could keep my heart rate under control and not push the pace unnecessarily.
There were a few observations, I made about the run. The first was that because I managed my breathing so closely during the early stage of the run, I found that turning it up still kept my breathing under control. Meaning I didn’t over extend even when I was picking up the pace.
Once I hit the 5 mile mark, I felt like I was just cruising. I didn’t think much about the distance for a while after that. I did count the laps that I did around the Humboldt Park loop but really didn’t think too much more about the distance or how much further I had to go.
In the runs I’ve done since then, the 5 mile warm up seems to be the thing. Once I get to 5 miles, I’m feeling pretty warmed up and can begin to settle in. What I’m hoping to do to build from there is to find the warm up at 5 miles, then for 10 more miles just be settled in. The next milestone is to get up to the 15 mile mark. Where I just tempo run for 15 total miles.
I have found my comfortable pace on a 10 mile run, which I believe should be around 8:15-8:25 per mile. My goal for the marathon at this point is to run it at 4 hours or less. If I can extend the 8:25/mile for the entire length of a marathon this should be possible.
I bought some new shoes that I have not done a 10 mile run on yet. I have done a 7.5 mile run as my longest one so far on them. I plan to take them for a 10 mile run tomorrow.
ACL to Marathon 