My training is heating up

And only in the literal sense.  Today I was planning on running my first long run, which was supposed to be a nice, easy run to cap off what I would consider to be a successful first week back in the saddle of marathon training.  Instead, today's long run turned into a run / walk mess, and required a marathon effort just to finish 13 miles.

Of course all of this could have been easily prevented.  Instead of getting up at 7:00 and hitting the road at 8:00 AM to start my run, I decided to enjoy a long Sunday morning reading and drinking coffee.  Not really paying attention to the time, next thing I know it's 1:00 PM.  What the heck, I'll just go run now I tell myself.  It's ONLY 85 degrees and I'm ONLY planning on running for 2 hours.  After heeding Lauren's advice to wear sunscreen, I lather up in SPF 2000 (it's fun being Irish), grab my iPod and sunglasses, and hit the road.

After running approximately 25 miles in the past five days, I somewhat convince myself that I should be able to finish close to 15 miles in 2 hours, just like the old days.  Silly me.  After the first 20 minutes, I realize that this will not be the case.  Now it feels like 95 degrees.

I take the first hour slow, running between 8:30 and 9:00/miles.  At the hour mark, I'm a little over 6.5 miles, so I decide turn around and start the second half of my workout.  And here's where it became ugly.  After one mile on the return leg, the heat started really getting to me, and I started my first of four walking "intervals" (calling these intervals makes this sound and read like a legitimate workout).  I walk by Medway Garden Center, and decide to see if I can get some water from one of their hoses.  The supervisor countered with a ice cold bottle of water, and after a few thank yous, I was back on my way.  While the water was great, the benefits turned out to be short lived.  I wound up finishing my last 4+ miles running one mile, and walking a half a mile, until I was finished.

Luckily, the 13 miles only took 2 hours and ten minutes (ughhh).  I could have and probably should have, walked the last five miles of my workout, but last thing I wanted was for my sunscreen to sweat off, and top off my workout with a sunburn.  I'm not sure anyone would really call this a long run, but for the sake of my training calendar, I am going to.   Going forward, I will be running in the mornings or evenings.  And I will be bringing water and food with me on any run longer than an hour and a half.

Other than today, I'm pretty happy with the week.  For those of you interested in follow my runs in more detail, you can click on the specific workout to the right of post section and it'll take you to a page with a ton of stats and a map of my run.  If you run and enjoy documenting your runs/times/etc., I recommend checking out RunningAhead.com.  After using it for a day, I find it much easier to use than other similar sites, such as mapmyrun.com or garminconnect.com.