I slept in this morning to help with the fatigue I was feeling yesterday. That seemed to help a lot. Unfortunately it did not seem to help with the sore calf, so I spent the morning massaging the calf, rubbing wintercrest on the calf, taking ibuprofen, and icing, all in an effort to get my leg feeling good enough to run a full 20 miles. By the time I got out the door it was about 90 degrees outside, which is honestly not that bad considering that I have done many runs at 100+ degrees this summer. Unfortunately my calf was still bugging me when I started running, and withing the first half mile of the run I was already wondering if I would need to shorten the run to 15 miles (or less). Fortunately, the calf slowly started to loosen up (starting at about 1 mile), and by the time I was 2 miles into the run I didn't feel any discomfort at all, and I knew that running the full 20 miles wouldn't be a problem any more. I was also glad that today's run was a planned "easy 20", meaning that I would only run a 4 mile tempo near the end, and also meaning that I would not need to change workout plans to avoid injury. I started out running the first mile between 7:25 and 7:40 (not sure of the exact time because I didn't start my watch at first), and then sped up to 7:05 for the second mile. After that I was hitting miles fairly consistently in the low 7:00 range or faster for the rest of the workout. I hit 5 miles in 35:32 (based on the estimate of 7:40 for the first mile), made it to 10 miles in 1:10:05 (34:33 5 mile split). I started my 4 mile tempo at about 14.75 miles, and hit the 15 mile mark in 1:43:52 (33:47 for 5 miles). Splits for the 4 mile tempo were: 11:02 for the first 2 miles (missed the first mile marker, but the first mile was maybe a couple seconds faster than the second), followed by a 5:34 for mile 3 (lots of turn, tunnels, etc in this mile), and a final mile of 5:16 (total of 21:52 for 4 miles). I ran the last 5 miles in 29:26 to finish with a total time of 2:13:18 (again, estimating the first mile at 7:40, which was a conservative estimate to begin with). So, all in all I think it was a solid workout considering it was 90 degrees outside during the run, and I only stopped for water 3 times (at miles 4.75, 10.5, and 14.25), while only drinking maybe 12 oz of warm water each time I stopped. I never really felt too pressed during the workout today, which is a good thing because this workout was supposed to be easy. I was also glad that my calf still felt loose and didn't tighten up after I finished the workout today. Hopefully that carries over into next week. | 