advancing the process

I did the same 14-mile route as I did last week, but much slower. Running the downhill portions fast isn't worth the muscle damage, and subsequent impact on future training, it produces. I decide that after last week's 14-miler left me listless for a few days. This morning I did the (net) downhill portion (first 4.5 miles or so) at a very relaxed pace. I then kept that pace up for the uphill portion, which of course meant more effort, until I finished the 9-mile loop. I did another half loop (cut across) for the last 5 miles. I said to myself, I'd keep it under 8:00 min/mi, which would make the last uphill miles tough. I ended up running considerably faster than that. The last 5 miles were 7:49/150, 7:41/160, 7:37/157, 7:30/169, 7:23/167. Look at the elevation above from my GPS to make sense of the splits (note that GPS elevation data sucks and this is smoothed by SportTracks). Overall the run was 14.03/8:40/146.

Advancing the process is an essay by John Wiegley that I find myself having read a number of times over the last year or so. I read it in a non-running context, but I think it has some bearing on training, so I'm mentioning it here.