First LSD Day run

On Saturday I committed myself to running at a sustainable pace for a road circuit I had mapped out to be in the vicinity of seven miles in length. Typically when I run on the road I have a minimum pace I like to sustain throughout the run. In the 1994 movie Speed starring Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper and Sandra Bullock a bus has been rigged with a bomb to blow up if the speed of the bus falls below 50 mph.

Because I typically monitor my pace for my road runs, I don't get to fully enjoy running for running's sake. In effect, I create an anxiety pool, which gets more shallow and deeper as my pace fluctuates above and below my goal pace.

The purpose of the Long Slow Distance run is to run at a comfortable pace for a duration which incrementally exceeds your previous personal best. Much to my surprise, because I paid absolutely no attention to my pace and ran at a very comfortable pace I was able to run 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) almost effortlessly. I ran very early in the morning and consequently heat and humidity did not adversely impact my performance.

Prior to the run I had configured my watch to display stats in metric. I need to acclimate myself to how quickly kilometers roll by while running as well as locking in on my half marathon goal 5:41 per km pace. I am about a mile away from my house, in front of the community pool, and I decide to look at my watch to see how far I have run. I glance down and see a 10.o on my watch. For whatever reason, I am under the impression I have run 10 miles and decide i am going to run another two miles because I still feel fresh.

The last two miles (kilometers) of the run I am all but giddy that I was capable of running twelve miles. This meant I only had to up my personal best long run by 1.1 to get me to my half marathon race length. I could run 13.1 miles for my LSD runs for the majority of August because I was already there.

My bubble burst when I uploaded my data from my Garmin Forerunner to my laptop and it reported my run was only 7.46 miles long. While this was longer than my previous best of 6.2 miles, I had plenty in my tank when I quit running. I sprinted the last 0.25 kilometer of my run.

I figured out how to have my watch automatically record my time at the conclusion of each kilometer. This will serve to give me a 'last lap' kilometer pace reading throughout my half marathon race.

My average pace for this run was 5 minutes and 51 seconds per kilometer (9:26 per mile). This pace translates roughly to a 2:03:30 half marathon time.

Using the equivalent performances chart on http://www.mcmillanrunning.com, I need to average a 5:23 per kilometer pace for a total of 54 minutes within my next 10K race in order to equate to a 2 hr half marathon time. I think I can hit 54 minutes and change. Shaving five and a half minutes off of my 10K PR will be a tall order to fill.