LEESBURG 20K (race report):

Last year I had probably my worst race of the year at the Leesburg 10k. It was warm and especially humid, as one would expect in August, and I wasn't prepared for the rolling hills on the 10k course that year. This year I did the 20k (12.4 miles) as a marathon-pace training run instead of running it all-out. We lucked out with the weather: mid-60's at 7:30am with only moderate humidity and cloud cover but no rain. My goals were 1) to average around 6:43/mi., because that's Daniels's marathon pace for the "VDOT" I've been training at (55), and 2) never to push too hard, so that it's conceivable that in 9 weeks I might actually hold something like that pace for a full marathon. Those two goals potentially conflict. After the first couple miles, I felt like I had to push too hard to stay under 6:50/mi., so I backed off a bit to the low- or mid-6:50's for the next few miles, thinking that I just wasn't in shape to run Daniels's prescribed pace. But after the turn-around, it became clear that we had been running slightly uphill for most of the first half of the race, even though it somehow didn't look like it. That explained why I was having trouble with the pace. After the turn-around, though, it not only looked like we were running slightly downhill, but also the running became both easier and faster. There were modest rolling hills throughout, so the pace wasn't very even. But in the second half I probably ran around 20 seconds per mile faster than in the first, without ever pushing too hard. I finished in 1:23:06, which is 6:41/mi. and 2:55 marathon pace. So I hit the goal pace and didn't push too hard. But it's very difficult to tell whether that'll be a feasible marathon pace for me in 9 weeks. I guess that wasn't the point of the run, which was instead to start getting used to that pace on the assumption that it'll be around my marathon pace. My workouts are supposed to be the fitness gauge that tells me what kind of marathon pace I'm up to, and racing a half marathon all-out in 4 weeks should also be a useful (though by no means flawless) gauge. I should be able to race a half at around 6:20 pace, or maybe a bit slower without a taper, in order to have any hope of running a 2:55 marathon, though of course my ability to hang on in the later miles can't be tested in that way. That's why Daniels schedules long runs in which there is tempo-pace running both toward the beginning and near the end. Anyway, things seem on track, and I enjoyed running moderately fast for an extended stretch. It's not by any means easy for me to run that fast even for a little while, which makes it difficult to imagine running a full marathon at that pace. But once I get into a grove, it feels like I can sustain the pace indefinitely, or at least until a wall looms that I haven't reached at that pace yet. Daniels is a wizard to emphasize training about 20 seconds faster at tempo pace, since that makes this (marathon) pace feel just manageable for longer distances by comparison. Again the question: but for how long? That only the marathon race itself can answer.