Week 4 is in the books leaving destruction in its wake. More specifically, my self-destruction. I hit all my prescribed runs, but not really all the paces I wanted. I’m happy I got through each day without much drama, but disappointed with most of the performances.

Monday’s 9 miler included 5 miles at half marathon pace (which right now is around 7:05 – 7:10 min/mi). So instead of seeing my miles tick by consistently at 7:07, 7:07, 7:07, etc, I saw 7:31, 7:08, 6:57, 7:21, 7:29. Yikes. I’m going to need to work on that if I want to get anywhere near a new PR at Chicago. Fortunately, the rest of the week was relatively easy, though running to work (Wednesday) is all uphill all the time.

Saturday’s long run was a beast of a workout, 16 miles with 10 of those miles at marathon (race) pace. For now that pace is targeted around 7:30 – 7:40 min/mi. Eventually I’ll need to get that down to 7:15

min/mi, but for now I’m still building up the mileage. Well, much like Monday (and in some ways, much worse) I couldn’t hold the paces at all (here are the splits, specifically miles 3 – 12). There were a few miles where I felt like I was working hard but the numbers weren’t cooperating.

In many/most/all cases I am comfortable with blaming the insane heat and humidity. All of my runs have started before 7am, with some as early as 5:45am, to avoid the crushing heat. The problem with that is there’s no end in sight to the current weather. The upcoming week 5 is a recovery week. My goal will be to take it real easy and bounce back for some real solid training in week 6.