Ten Miles Strong

Ten miles is not an especially long run this early in the training plan, although to non-runners, or even to ordinary everyday runners, it may seem like a daunting distance.  Soon I will be running 14, 16, 18, and 20 miles on my long runs, finally topping off with a 22-mile run three weeks before the race.  I remember when Martha was training for her first marathon we were doing an easy ten-mile run one weekend between the super-long distances and she said, "I never thought I'd get to the point where a ten-mile run was easy!"

Not only was today's run easy, run at my slow long-run pace (and could it have something to do with the fact that this is the third week in a row I've run that distance?) but I felt that I could have gone two or three more miles.  That is always an encouraging moment in training:  to realize you could have run one more mile, done one more 800-mile repeat, one more tempo mile, but you held back to conserve the strength that is slowly and surely accumulating throughout your training.

I have seen many people train for a marathon too hard.  They run their long runs at race pace, as if they are doing a mini-marathon nearly every weekend.  And they burn out.  They have nothing left in the tank.  One should no more train like that than run completely out of gas in your car.  What is the point in draining yourself completely?

Save it for race day.  That's the day when you will run your tank completely dry.  And then you will continue to run a few more miles . . .