20 in White Plains!

Saturday we had another fieldtrip run, this one was in White Plains which is way north of the city. It was an absolutely beautiful day, even a little chilly. It was even MORE chilly in White Plains, even though it isn't that far away from New York City.

Coach Christine was there to describe the workouts to us. I was pretty much dreading doing 20 miles, and she said that we didn't REALLY have to do our 20 on Saturday if we were running the Marine Corps, because we still had time to get another 20 in. But she also said that it was a good idea to get the 20 out of the way. I just figured that I really wasn't going to get any better weather than this for a 20 miler. AND it's not like I would really want to do it any other time either.

My goal was to run easy so that I felt like I could make it through the entire 20. So I wasn't going to get upset if I didn't get a great time. I was trying more to run on feeling. That being said, I wanted to maintain around a 10 minute mile throughout the entire run.

I always love our fieldtrip runs because they give us a change of scenery. Although Central Park is beautiful it sometimes is monotonous when you run it day after day. And White Plains was really pretty. We were running in the forest the whole time and the weather stayed nice and cool. The only bad thing about these runs is that the turnout isn't always great...so a lot of us were running alone. This was actually fine for me this time though, because I could really concentrate on staying steady with my pace.

It was easy to keep track of pace because our run consisted of 5 miles out to the dam, turn around and run back to the start and repeat the whole thing again. My first five miles was 41:32, my second 59:09, my third 49:50 and my last 50:40, for a total of 3:21.14. This tells me that I need to SLOW DOWN at the beginning of my run. I think this is the hardest part for me. But I bet if I would have slowed down I would have ended up with a much better time.

However, I was really happy with my run because I actually felt at the end of my run that I could have done 6 more miles. I've never felt that way before on a 20 mile run. Don't get me wrong, I was SORE, and if I would have stopped it would have been over, but my legs just kept going (I have no idea how). My 20 mile run is usually a pretty good indicator of how my marathon will go. If I feel as good as I did during that run when I run my marathon, I will be in good shape.

I DO think that I will try to SLOW DOWN in the beginning though.