11/7 - Kenyan Way Long Run - 20 miles

For the first time in who knows how long I actually made it to the start of the run on time and was standing around by the fence waiting to start. Usually I'm trying to catch up with everyone as I'm a couple minutes late. It's also nice being able to get a halfway decent parking space. I looked at my schedule last night and saw it actually called for 22 instead of 20, but my longest run to date this year was about 18.5 miles and Sean has recommended not adding more than 2 miles per week to the long run so I decided to go for 20 this week. The run today called for running 11 miles at marathon pace in the middle of the run. I was contemplating whether I really wanted to do this and I didn't see Sam out there shortly before we were going to start. My legs were a little tired from Thursday's progressive run and running last night so I thought that I would just run with a couple of the other guys who were going to do 11 miles at 6:45 or 6:50 pace. About 30 seconds before we start Sam shows up and said he was planning on doing the 11 miles at marathon pace so I decided that I'd give it a try. We did the first 6 miles at a comfortable pace and hit the water stop at 6 miles coming out of downtown. Sam had said he was going to go for about 6:10 pace. I had been thinking of doing 6:15 pace, but I decided I'd give 6:10 a shot for as long as I could. The first mile we were right on pace at 6:10 and then Sam took off and shot ahead. I was content to stay around 6:10 pace and let him go. I skipped the next water stop 3 miles into the hard part and thought maybe I'd catch up to Sam at the water stop, but he grabbed such a quick drink and took off I never quite caught up. I could see him the whole way until the next water stop, but he was gradually pulling away a little bit. I had expected the next water stop to be around 6 miles into our marathon pace effort, but I didn't hit it until about 6.5. I knew I was going to catch Sam so I took an extra 30 seconds to take my energy gel and have a couple of cups of water to chase it. I was running really strong the first 7 miles and then slipped a little between miles 7 - 9, but was still close to 6:15 pace. The last 2 miles I was struggling and slipped down to mid 6:20's. That got me to 17 miles and then I headed back to the base and added on some to get to 20 miles. I was pretty happy with the workout and I stayed tough and kept pushing even when I was getting tired. Sam is in good shape and I'm going to have my work cut out trying to catch back up to him for the Houston marathon. My splits were - 7:48, 7:24, 7:31, 7:12, 7:02, 7:08, 6:10, 6:12, 6:09, 6:18, 6:07, 6:06, 6:10, 6:17, 6:17, 6:35, 6:26, 8:06, 7:20, 7:11. Total run time - 2:15

I may end up running the Boston marathon again in April. My dad is running the Ft. Worth marathon to try to qualify tomorrow and if he hits the qualifying time I'll sign up for Boston and run it in April. He was planning on trying to qualify at Houston, but the registration for Boston is well ahead of last year's pace when it closed less than a week after Houston. Somebody at the BAA told him on Tuesday if he didn't run a qualifying time this month he wouldn't be able to get into the 2010 race and would have to wait until 2011. He found the Ft. Worth marathon and instead of a 20 mile long run he'll be doing a 26 mile long run this weekend. His qualifying time is 4:00 and I think he should be able to qualify.