Tough 20 Mile Long Run -- Cool, but late wind!

Well, today was a tough run. 32.2 kilometres (20 miles). And, actually, most of it was pretty 'easy'. Or at least not too painful. But my last 8k lap of our block, the wind picked up from the east and the last full kilometre, it felt like I was pushing a car. I was targeting 4:52/k (7:50 per mile), but was only able to hit 5:01 for that kilometre. To put it in perspective, as soon as I turned the corner to finish the last 0.2 k., my pace picked up to 4:42/k and I wasn't working nearly as hard.

Here are my splits (targeting 5:11 for the first 24k and 4:52 for the last 8.2 k):

5:14
5:05
5:06
5:11
5:12
5:10
5:11
5:13
5:09
5:10
5:10
5:12
5:07
5:10
5:13
5:08
5:02
5:08
5:09
5:05
5:12
5:08
5:07
5:09
4:49
4:50
4:49
4:51
4:49
4:49
4:51
5:01
4:42 (200 m.)

My average pace was 5:05 for the entire run, and for the last 8k it was 4:51 -- so I beat my goal pace for the last 8k by 1 second per kilometre, despite that tough last k.

I did take three 2-minute walk breaks at the 8K intervals. I ate one Carb Boom Energy Gel every mile for as long as I could -- but eventually I ran out of moisture in my mouth. I think they will work fine for the first half the marathon, but then I'm going to have to start doing sport drink or something. We'll see. I'll see if having water more than every 8k works to keep the moisture in my mouth when I run Port Stanley next weekend. I'm going to need some form of carbs to keep my energy levels up!

Anyhow, we'll chalk this up as a fairly successful run!