Had a great run in St. George with Fritz, Scott, Zak, Brandon, Toni, Reed, and Dan (yes, the famous Dan Varga joined us on his bike!). Awesome crew. We decided it would be fun to run a portion of the marathon course. We ran 22 miles of the course, starting at mile 2 of the course. Warmed up 5 miles (although a couple of the warm-up miles ended up being ~ 6:10 pace). Then, did a 15 mile tempo in 1:19:58 (5:20 average; time for the first 13.1 miles of the tempo was 1:10:17; time for the last 13.1 miles of the tempo was 1:08:55; time for last 10 miles of the tempo was 51:25 -- 5:08 average). Started the tempo at the base of Veyo hill. Ran conservatively for the first 5 miles, which are mostly uphill. Splits: 5:54 (Veyo), 5:42, 5:32, 5:43, 5:37, 5:21, 5:13, 4:59, 4:59, 5:08, 5:05, 5:15 (uphill -- mile 18 of the marathon), 5:14, 5:05, 5:04. I have a head cold, so I didn't feel 100%, but I still felt very strong. I thought about doing another mile or two of tempo, but I decided I'd better err on the side of caution and avoid the temptation.
All the guys looked great. Lengths of tempo the guys did varied in length. While not a pre-requisite for the marathon, running the course today certainly was good preparation for the St. George Marathon.
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