So I did another 20 mile training run today.  I am training for the Portland Marathon October 9th and I am using the FIRST program.  I may not be sticking to the interval and tempo work as best I can but I am trying to stay true to the long runs and prescribed paces.  My original goal was to run an 8:30 pace but if I can run 8:22 I will qualify for Boston!  So that is the goal.  With that in mind, today’s run was to be MP + :30, so 8:52.  I am happy to report I ran 8:42 and felt pretty darn good.

I was getting tired of running the same out-and-back in town so today I drove up to Ventura where you can run 20 miles easily with no traffic to cross.  The weather was cool and overcast for the whole run so no problems with heat.  The first 10 miles were a breeze and I felt great.  By about 15 I was getting a little tired but I really wanted to negative split.  At 18 I ran into a bunch of HS runners and told them as I caught them they better at least be able to keep up with me since I was 18 miles into my run.  Two gave chase. I kept up for a little. But the got me none the less!

Over all it was a very successful run.  I will go back and run it one more time (at MP + :15) before Portland.  I brought my camera today to try and get a few pictures. (I really need to work on my self portrait skill; there were some pretty funny ones!) Garmin details can be found here.