Six Miles on the Treadmill

upside-down half selfie, courtesy of River

Mr M had stuff he had to do all day on Saturday, so I did my long run on the treadmill again.

I walked for 5 minutes, then started running.
The first 10 minutes were rough, but then I settled in and everything felt better. This happens when I run outside too, but it's more noticeable on the treadmill.
Altogether, I ran for 30 min, walked for 5 min, ran for 30 min, walked for 5 min, and ran for 23 min.
I then walked for 17 min to cool down.

I kept it nice and easy, like last week, with the main goal being to just get my mileage in. However, I was feeling pretty good, so I sped up a bit on the second round and a bit more on the third round. By the end I was going at a decent pace that was quite a bit faster than when I'd started, but it felt good. I kept my walking warmup and cool down separate from my run mileage this week for a more accurate idea of speed and pace. Between the warm up and cool down I added another 1.1 miles to my total for the day. 6 miles run + 1.1 miles walked = 7.1 miles total.

It took me 34 min to complete 2 miles.
The clock was at 64:30 min when I hit 4 miles.
And at 93 min I finished my 6 mile run.

The times reflect the fact that I sped up as my run progressed, and left me with an average pace of 15.5 min/mile. Not bad for a long treadmill run. And I only walked 10 minutes during those 93 minutes, so yay for progress! By comparison, it took me 90 minutes to run and walk 5.2 miles last week.

The pace is a little slower than I need to run my half, but at this point I'm not too worried since it was on the treadmill and I wasn't running my race pace.

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This week I registered for my half marathon in April. It's a good thing I actually glanced through the terms and conditions, though. Because of road closure limitations, this race has a 3 hour time limit and walkers aren't allowed (i.e., you can't walk the whole thing). In theory, that's not a problem, since all four of my half marathons have been completed under 3 hours (ok, that first one was 2:59:18, but that is still less than 3 hours!). However, none of those half marathons were run while 25 weeks pregnant. So it's a good thing I'm being as diligent as I am with my training this time around. I'll need to keep a maximum slowest pace of 13:44 in order to finish under 3 hours, but obviously I'd like to finish faster than that.

I also registered for the 8 mile run I'm doing at the end of February, but didn't register yet for my March 5k. The one I ran last year isn't open for registration yet, so I may run a different one on the same day since I'd like to get the registrations done and out of the way.

My mileage for the week: 13.97 miles. It's less than last week, but I also skipped my walks on two days this week because I was tired and didn't have the energy. Better to skip my walks than my runs, though.