On June 28th I put in a 17-mile run in and around San Francisco. My Marathon training group met at The Sports Basement in San Francisco, which happens to be on the route of the S.F. Marathon next month. Jim, the "Energizer Bunny", and I met up early with another Marathon runner, Francisco, since the three of us were putting in a longer run than the rest of our traing group (most of my training group are training to run the Half Marathon).
Francisco is a younger, faster and an experienced Marathon runner. Jim and and ran with him for a few miles, but then he took off. Francisco was going for a long easy run of ~22 miles at a "leisurely" 8-minute mile pace - a lot faster than Jim and I. Jim and I are hoping to run the Marathon at right around 9-minute/mile pace, so we should be training at a pace even slower than that... Francisco: thanks for running a few slow miles with us old, slow guys!
Jim and I ran about 4 miles from Crissy Fields towards the starting line of the upcoming Marathon and then turned around to head back to Crissy Fields. Once back at The Sports Basement, we met up with the main group to join them for the rest of our run.
A large group of us ran up to and then across the Golden Gate Bridge. Jim and I kept up with a pair of faster runners whom I hadn't met before. We followed them down to Fort baker, under the bridge and then back to Crissey Fields. For extra measure, Jim added a quick detour around the lagoon before returning to our starting point. Even though I was totally beat, I felt compelled to follow him.
Once I returned home, I mapped out our run and checked my running time. I was surprised to discover that Jim and I had completed a solid 17-mile run at just under 9-minutes per mile. This is faster than our goal pace for the Marathon and faster than recommended for a long training run. On the other hand, it's empowering to have knocked out approximately 2/3 of the Marathon distance at faster than our target pace!
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