Sunday 15 miler

What I thought all through the run to be a terrible run ended up being one of the best long runs I have had time wise. It was a perfect morning. We started at 6:30am and it was a cool 62 degrees and low humidity for a change. Jackie and Jamie started at 6am from the dog park area of the River Trail and Annette and I started at the skate park. They were there waiting for us when we pulled up. The girls took off and it felt fast to me, but after being out of town for 3 days I was feeling fat and slow anyway. My achilles was still tight, my legs were tight and nothing really felt good. Then my garmin wasn't getting a good signal and I look down at my heart rate monitor and its showing something like 75-85 . This made things feel worse when your stuff doesn't work. I kept thinking how could my heart rate be that low when I felt like I was running hard?

Just past two miles when we had a short walk break I finally figured out what was going on. I had messed with my heart rate monitor last night so come to find out I had changed it from actual heart rate to heart rate percentage. No wonder it only showed 80. It meant 80% effort. Once I fixed that everything was good and my garmin only lost signal for a couple minutes.

Jackie and Jamie got ahead of Annette and I as they both run pretty fast. By the time we got to the Big Dam Bridge they took the loop around by Cooks Landing. Annette took a bathroom break and we decided to do an out and back across the bridge rather than having to add on elsewhere. Plus running the bridge is a good workout. We both ran up and down the other side without stopping and it felt good. At the 6 mile mark Annette turned around and I went on as I had planned on 14-15 miles so I was shooting for 7 out and 7 back at least. Annette ended up doing a couple bridge repeats waiting on me as we kinda got our wires crossed at the turn around.

I felt slow all day. It might have been because Annette and the girls were running so strong. I did not feel it. I wasn't tired but my achilles was bothering me a lot so I just couldn't really get the legs to cooperate. The cardio was there, the legs or really foot wasn't in the game today. At some points I actually felt so slow I just wanted to quit running. Not a good thing. I did finish out the run, hitting the 14 mile point right before the Skate Park. I ran another half mile up the road and back to get my 15. I never walked the bridge going up or down and I never walked any of the other hills. I took one gu through the whole run and about 5 sport beans along with at least two bottles of water/accelerade. Overall I felt good, but my left achilles still hurt. After I got home I was almost ready to declare it an official injury, but now its feeling better so we will see. I could have run this run today so much faster if it wasn't for that.

Here are my splits. Some not too bad when I pushed it and I could have done more. I really wanted negative splits for the 2nd half but that didn't work out.

Total Distance - 15.02 miles
Time - 2:44:26
Average pace - 10:57 - This would be a PR for 15 miles or even 13 for me.
1- 10:46
2- 9:11
3- 10:58
4- 10:56
5- 10:57 - this was going up and down the bridge
6- 9:53 - mile 6 and 7 I just ran harder and had more turnover.
7- 9:44 - I should have ran like this for at least 13 miles
8- 11:51 - the walk break here killed me and I never could run fast again
9- 11:15
10- 11:36 - part of this was going back up the bridge
11- 11:49
12- 11:31
13- 11:31
14- 11:52
15- 10:15 - I should have had more of this, it wasn't that hard, it just hurt

Average heart rate 159
1800 calories