Start time: 9/5/09, 6:00am
Location: Hains Point, Mt. Vernon Trail, C&O Canal, National Mall
Distance: 20 miles
Average pace: 10:24min/mile
Total Miles For September: 28 miles
Total Miles For 2009: 597 miles

It’s funny, this 20-miler was only 15 seconds per mile faster than my horrible 18-miler last week, but I feel really good about it.

It was a super-small group, just me, Dave, Steve, and John—and John was only running 12-13 miles. Steve’s been building his mileage back up after throwing out his back a few weeks ago, and I was impressed he was jumping back up as much as he was. After a week of great weather, it heated back up today, but not as bad as last week’s horrible weather, at least.

After bombing out on last week’s run, the plan was to take it a little easier, something that Steve wasn’t going to argue one bit. I’d say that we hovered in the 10-to-10:30 range for the first three quarters or so, although we did have two particularly slow miles in the 11-min range; one involving navigating from the top of Key Bridge down to the Canal towpath, and another one dodging some construction barriers when we escaped from the towpath.

What made me happy, though, was that about halfway through mile 17, I was feeling great and I started kicking it back out. So it was nice to see the last four splits being 10:14, 9:14, 9:08, 8:51. And I felt fantastic, like I could’ve run another five or six miles at that speed. (Which would have given me a PR was it a marathon. A funny thought.) Or in other words, if I do the “nice and easy” approach for the first half and then pick it up in the second half, I should do fine. That often-elusive negative split that most runners want, in other words. (I have actually had a couple of negative splits over the years, but not lots.)

It’s funny, I was just talking earlier in the run about how for my last two marathons I’m really not going to worry about finishing times; NYC and WDW are going to be about the experience. But if I play my cards right in NYC… well, it won’t be that long-hoped-for sub-4:00 marathon (I’ve given up on that) but I might just squeak out a new PR. That would be nice.

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3161891