Part Three: Taste the Rainbow!

So we're finally up to present day.  I really must blog more often if I'm going to have this much to say...

If you scroll back a few posts, you'll see that my last (first) 20-miler did NOT go so well.  I crashed and burned and learned a ton.  Now it's been more than 2 months, and I was ready to try again--and try a few new things:

1.  Drymax Hot Weather socks, as seen in the previous post.  Blister season is upon us, and I want to do everything in my power to keep my feet from being totally trashed like they were last year.   

2.   Gallowalking.  Jeff Galloway has helped countless numbers of people finish marathons using his run/walk method.  For today, I opted to run 4 minutes, walk 1, the whole way.  I had multiple reasons for doing so:

a) I wanted a gentle transition back to this distance, as the longest I've run since the last 20 was 16 miles.

b) I'm looking forward to another long run on the 4th of July, so I wanted to take it easy today.

c) I wanted to give the Galloway thing a fair shake.  I'm pretty sure I don't want to do it on race day, but it's a nice way to change things up in training.  I like for each workout to have a unique goal or twist.  Just running 20+ miles every other week or so might get kinda boring.  :)

3.  A new fuel source:

Seemed fitting since I'm so into this whole Rainbow of Running thing!

I'm happy to report that this 20-miler was SO much better than the last one!  I ran smarter, faster, and exponentially happier.  Although I only walked just over 10% of the total mileage, doing so helped me keep my HR in the "cool" zones for more than 90% of the run, and I felt so fantastic that I ran a negative split, letting myself push just a teensy bit during the last few miles.  For the last interval, I let myself go for it and finished my 20-miler running 5K pace!  Yay!

A few other notables from this run:

- I did the whole thing without music.  Are you kidding?  File this under miraculous, along with waking up before 5 on a day off, voluntarily running 20 miles by myself, and enjoying every minute of it.  But I did it.  Just listened to nature. 

- There was a lot of nature.  I saw birds, bunnies, dogs, deer, cows, a kitten, mice, squirrels, and....a skunk!  Pepe Le Pew walked across the road not 10 feet in front of me!  Needless to say, that one got my HR up, and I can only assume my Garmin counted the miles I ran backwards!

- God outdid Himself painting the sky this morning, and though the pic doesn't nearly do it justice, let's just say the sunrise was as colorful as my fuel source or my heart rate analysis.