Tosa wins bronze!

Reiko Tosa won the bronze medal in women's marathon in the World Athletic Championship in Osaka. She ran the Boston Marathon last year (also came on third) so technically I ran with her. It was Japan's first individual medal on the last day, so very well done to Tosa-san! She started to trail behind at the 38-km, and fell to the 5th but picked up the pace again to take over two runners. I know it's almost impossible to regain strength at that point of the race, so this really was a human-super effort and she deserves the highest praise. Also, the Boston Red Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz whom I praised highly on my post from 17 August, had a no-hitter against the Orioles in his second start! So it was a very good weekend all around.

Back to my own training, which was of course much less dramatic. However I managed to complete a marathon-pace run for 15 miles on Saturday morning. In the previous weekend I could not go beyond 7 miles, so I was very relieved. The weather was more cooperative this time; it was overcast and the temperature was lower by 5 degrees. My pace per miles was as follows:
1 7:20:88
2 7:07:11
3 6:58:20
4 6:55:98
5 6:55:08
6 6:55:61
7 6:50:84
8 6:50:09
9 6:50:99
10 6:48:57
11 6:52:83
12 6:53:78
13 6:50:75
14 6:51:02
15 6:30:67
As you can see, once I warmed up I could maintain the pace between 6 minutes 50 and 55 seconds, which I was happy with. I think the marathon-pace run is important more mentally than physically; I would have been very anxious going into the race if I had had another bad run yesterday. Ideally I wish I could run at 6 minutes 45 to 50 second-pace, but that's probably too greedy...

Yesterday: 15 miles
This week: 75 miles