LONG RUNS!

Saturday is becoming long run day and will be until we reach the marathon with the exception of weeks where there is an event we are doing on a Sunday like the Lacamas Lake Half Marathon on July 26.

Denise ran 11 miles this morning for her longest run ever. She did it 3 seconds per mile faster than her target pace and felt very strong afterwards. I ran 15 (my longest run since the Portland Marathon in 2002) at 7 seconds per mile faster than my target pace. All in all two very good runs.

We have both settled on a marathon training schedule and both are produced by the Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training (FIRST) located at Furman University in SC. You can find out more about their training methods at http://www.furman.edu/first/. The key premise is that you run harder but less frequently - three days a week plus two cross training days. This will take some getting used to since I normally run 6-7 days per week but really like the look of the program.

In addition to todays runs, I did 4.25 miles yesterday, 5.5 at the track on Thursday evening plus 9.5 miles on the bike trails around the lake that morning, and on Wednesday I did 4.25 miles on the Heritage Trail.

Denise's mother is in town so we also went out on the lake in our boat for a few hours this afternoon and now everyone is having a little quiet time. Tomorrow I will update the list of names added to the training shirt.