The end of the month of September brought about the end of my training escalation. That bright sunny Sunday morning saw me once again at Antrim Park to log in my weekly high mileage day for training. My training program listed it as my final long walk prior to the taper period that ends with the Half Marathon. The ten miles went well. No real problems to report with the exception of getting a small rock in my shoe that caused a blister. Not fun but was able to finish the final 3 miles without much of a change to my mile times.
I finished the walk in 2:48:46 with an average pace of 16:53 minutes/mile. That average pace will put me finishing the half marathon in about 3 hours and 41 minutes. I spent quite a bit of time during my walk thinking. That’s what I love about walking (especially without headphones and music). It gives me a chance to do some real thinking. Yesterday, the topic of thought was what I wanted as goals for the half marathon. I finally decided that the most important thing for me to accomplish is to have fun. I know that sounds trite but the more I thought about it the more I wanted that to be my main goal. I have no idea what will happen once the race starts. Most of what happens will be outside my control so I want to make sure that I have a great time. After that, my “serious” goal would be to finish in less than 4 hours. All in all, I would have to say that the whole training experience has been great.
Here are my splits for the 10 mile walk: (1) 17:34, (2) 16:33, (3) 17:12, (4) 16:17, (5) 16:02, (6) 16:21, (7) 16:56, (8) 18:20, (9) 17:01 and (10) 16:32.
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