First 20-miler of the season

Everything was going smoothly since the brief ankle problem. I had finished the first of three heavy training weeks, each with around 55 miles with no troubles.

My first 20-miler of the season was amazing.  It was yet another beautiful, unseasonably warm day. To keep it simple, I used Google Maps to find a point 10 miles north, and ran there and back.

From my hometown of Little Falls, I ran north into Woodland Park and Paterson via McBride Avenue. Running past the Great Falls, I made a couple of short turns which brought me to River Road. I took River all the way up to the north end of the city and crossed the Maple Avenue bridge into Fair Lawn. Maple cuts right through Bergen County on the border of Glen Rock and into Ridgewood, where I turned around.

At the turnaround, I checked the stopwatch and could not believe it. I was running exactly my goal marathon pace (7:01), exciting because it made me feel good about my abilities, but worrisome because I really should have been going a lot slower on this training run. But there were no significant hills on this run, something I was not used to after doing most of my long runs over the mountains in Montclair, so I practically flew through it.

For the second half, I decided that I would just run comfortably. If the beautiful day and my strong legs dictated that "comfortable" meant "marathon pace", then so be it. But if I needed to slow down a bit, that would be fine, too.

Around Mile 16, I started feeling a bit fatigued, so I allowed that slowdown and finished feeling great at around two hours and 24 minutes, for an average pace in the second half of 7:24.

Good stuff.