Yesterday morning I was struck by a sudden jump in my weekday mileage. I’ve always enjoyed when my long runs have climbed to a distance that makes normal people shake their heads and wonder at my sanity, but I like to keep my week day runs on the shorter side. I’ve repeatedly avoided training plans that climb to 8 or more miles on a weekday. I mean, come on, who has time for that? Certainly, not someone running at my pace.

But right now, I do have time for longer runs during the week, so this week I allowed my training plan to trick me into an 8+ mile run on a Thursday morning. I say trick because it was written as a ladder workout (warm-up, 1 mile @ goal pace, recovery, 2 mile….etc.), those miles sure do add up!

I never get sick of running by the water.

My 8.13 mile run (yes, I count every teeny tiny bit, I refuse to round down to 8) included two 1 mile segments and two 2 mile segments each run at goal pace. Currently I’m using a range of 9:35/mile to 10:05/mile for goal pace workouts. (I don’t have a very strict time goal, so I used my predicted marathon pace based on my last two races to arrive at that window.) I ended up running around 9:50/mile during those portions of the run, and it never felt impossible, which I’ll take as a good sign.

One thing I’ve been doing that I’m not sure is a very good idea: walking on my recovery intervals. I don’t walk the entire recovery part, but at least half. I don’t know whether this is bad or not. I’m not super concerned because I plan on taking walk breaks in the race, but I still feel a little guilty when I do it.

What’s the longest “short” run you’re willing to do? Should I stop walking my recovery?