"Hardest workout ever"

This workout was titled “Hardest workout ever!” when it came to me in my August training schedule.  My first thought after reading it was something along the lines of, “You’ve got to be kidding me!!”, but as workout day drew near I actually got pretty excited about it.
 

The workout:

20 miles total

2 miles warm-up

5 miles at 6:39-6:50

4 miles at 6:35-6:45

3 miles at 6:30-6:40

2 miles at 6:20-6:30

1 mile under 6:20

(with 0.5 mile recovery jogs between tempos)

1 mile cool-down

My cat was concerned about these goal paces

I’d once read about a workout that included 5-4-3-2-1 miles all at goal marathon pace (6:50ish for me - 6:51.9 will get a sub-3:00) with half mile recoveries within a 20 miler, and I thought that would be challenging, but this was Intense with a capital I.  I figured that I would aim for the high end of the pace range on each repeat, but if that wasn’t happening I would just try to keep all repeats between 6:45-6:50.  Either way, it would be 15 miles total at goal marathon pace or faster, within a 20 mile long run!  In my book, any day you finish 20 miles is a good day!  Even though I've done enough 20+ mile long runs in the past 13 years that I'm not intimidated by the distance, I still feel accomplished after each one.

 
I planned ahead to practice pre-race and during race nutrition during this workout, something I’ve done really poorly at because when I’m starting runs at 5:00 a.m. I like to get up at 4:40 a.m.!  The Saturday this workout fell on, I had no time constraints and I was also running it alone, so the main consideration was weather.  With it being mid-August in the Midwest, I still wanted to start early and began this one at 5:53 a.m. after waking up at 5:00 a.m.  I prepared my nutrition the night before, and it included a scoop of vanilla cream Generation Ucan blended with almond milk pre-workout, then a PowerAde gel (all carbs + caffiene), an Accel gel (mostly carbs with 5 g protein), and Osmo electrolyte drink during the workout.  I don't like to fuel very heavily and find that I don't need to - probably because I do 99% of my morning runs fasted so my body has adapted - but I need to dial in my nutrition plans before race day unlike in 2015!  In retrospect, I should have bought some Gatorade or PowerAde to drink during the workout, since that is what will be served during my marathons, but I generally do fine with various drinks; it's solids that kill me right before/during running, hence the fluid nutrition pre-workout.  I am planning to work up to 2-3 scoops of Ucan pre-long run/pre-marathon (and probably 3-4 gels during).  One of the benefits of training with an Ironman triathlete is that I've gotten started with Ucan and Osmo because of Missy, both of which I love but probably wouldn't have tried without her recommendation.

Gels

I planned to run loops in order to run past my yard to pick up my bottles and gels, on my recoveries particularly.  I took a lawn chair out to the corner of our lot before I started and stocked it with my 2 water bottles, 2 gels, a pair of sunglasses in case the sun came out, a visor in case in rained, and some Vaseline.  My neighbors must think I'm a freak! I didn't end up needing the sunglasses, visor, or Vaseline. 

After 2 miles of warming up, I was off on my 5 mile tempo.  6:50 pace is an awkward pace for me - I find I want to either slow down to 7:00+ or speed up to 6:40, so I ended up watching my watch more on this repeat than on any other.  I stayed in the mid to high-6:40's through this, and that wasn't taxing so that was good (it also wasn't easy, just awkward is the best way to describe this pace for me right now)!

5 miles:  6:46, 6:49, 6:44, 6:41, 6:46 - average 6:45

I took my half mile recovery, including drinking while running, picking up my PowerAde gel, and peeing by the road (I stopped my watch while peeing - probably 20 seconds). I love living in the country!

Then I was off on the 4 mile.  I took my gel gradually during the first 1.5 miles of it, as I wanted to practice taking it while running marathon-ish pace.  I also picked up an Osmo bottle around mile 2 in order to wash down the gel (I did this while running, no watch stopping), then dropped it in another part of my yard after sipping on it.  I felt better dropping the pace a bit on this one because I was out of that awkward pace range, and towards the end of this repeat I started feeling confident that I could run closer to the lower range of my goal splits.  I started thinking about how I had run 8 continuous miles at 6:24 a couple of weeks ago, so shouldn't I be able to do the 3-2-1 miles with recoveries at the lower end of the prescribed pace ranges?

4 miles:  6:37, 6:41, 6:33, 6:37 - average 6:37

I took my half mile recovery, including picking up my water bottle out of my ditch to sip on (stopped my watch to climb into the ditch - less than 10 seconds), and was ready for my 3.  I told myself that I "only" had 6 more miles total hard, and I felt good about that.  I wasn't looking at my total mileage, but focusing in the segment in front of me.

Then came the 3 mile.  When I was less than a mile in, my husband and daughter came out of the house to cheer for me.  They knew I was running loops and knew how hard and potentially significant this workout was (my husband is a runner so especially appreciated how hard this would be).  My daughter even made a sign.  I told them I was on the 3 hard and that next time I came by I'd want my drink on my recovery.  I loved seeing them out there!

3 miles:  6:31, 6:32, 6:28 - average 6:30

On this half mile recovery, I picked up my drink and second gel from my daughter who was holding them out for me in true aid station form.  I told her she was the best aid station ever!  I ran out and back a bit so I could drop the bottle back off before my 2 mile repeat (I also ended up dropping off half of the gel, couldn't quite handle all of it, so I had the second half of it right after I finished to start recovery).  This was the first recovery jog I felt like I really needed - after the 5 and 4 mile hard portions I thought it would be easier to just keep running than to slow down and speed back up, but after this one I was breathing harder and knew the recovery would bring that down, which it did.

Then the 2 mile!  I decided I would definitely push for the lower end of my pace range on this one, which was 6:20. My daughter was still cheering for me, but my husband was explaining to our neighbor who had come out of his house (to get the newspaper I think) the weirdness that was happening with our family at 7:30 a.m.

2 miles:  6:20, 6:15 - average 6:18

I was definitely ready for this half mile recovery!  I hoped I could run my final mile in at least 6:15 since I'd just done that in the 2 mile, but I was getting pretty tired at this point.  I decided to go all in and see what happened.  For most of the repeat, my watch was running around 6:08 pace, and then for the final 0.2 I pretended like I was passing the mile 26 mark of a marathon and kicking it in. 

1 mile:  6:04.9

Any day a 20 miler includes a mile under 6:05 is sure a good day in my book (not that I have ever done that before!)!  It was HARD, but I wouldn't expect it to be any different.  I grabbed my water bottle and went off for my 1 mile cool-down.  Then my watch beeped 20 and I stopped to walk a bit to my sweet family!  Weather note - it was 70 degrees when I started and still 70 degrees when I finished, and cloudy with pretty much no wind the whole way.

The whole 20 ended up being at 6:52 pace, which is by far the fastest I've ever done 20 in training (average for the 15 total hard miles was 6:34; my PR half pace is 6:27 in comparison).  It was almost marathon goal pace for 20, the hard way (uneven pacing), which was super exciting!  In my actual marathon, I'll need to keep my Gamin average at 6:48 or so due to Garmin error (I plan on 0.01 per mile), but this was closer than I realized it would be!  I liked having the 5-4-3-2-1 segments because I was always focusing on the segment I was on, or even just the mile pace I was on, and I think I should work on doing that during my marathon.  When I saw this workout on paper I was intimidated, but I also thought - "How could a person hit this workout and NOT run a sub-3:00 marathon?!"  I hope that is the case!  The only time I have run 20 miles faster than this was in my PR marathon at the Dallas Marathon, with a 2:16:25 20 mile split (also my only recent marathon that I crashed in the final 3 miles, hence the 3:01:44 finish - but I learned from it and am ready to give sub-3:00 another go!).  7 weeks until Prairie Fire and 11 weeks until Bass Pro!

Best aid station ever!

Splits part 1

Splits part 2