And away I did ride

 Marty you big dog, nice run at the Mesa Marathon.  8:14 miles is pretty stiff for a 63 year old.  Loaded up and truckin'.  Nice work!

 Was please today with my 16.2 miler at 11:36 pace.  All on pavement.   No walking today.  Been having a decent week.  Two things stick out.  The first is when things go well early on one tends to want to set big time goals.  Stand aside can't you see we got the ballgame on here goals.  I just need to finish Ice Age under 12 hours and not perish.  Take it easy bromotron.  The second is when one decides to stay with long distance running later in life, you have to be willing to find the well oiled machine feeling sometimes an hour or so into the effort.  Pack a lunch.  This ain't no school dance.

 Years ago when I laced up a few times for marathons, I became aware of something that is difficult to manage or recognize.  If one is well trained and you start to tire, the brain over rides the system and wants to increase effort.  As if when you tire, the performance is ebbing so obviously more effort is required to maintain the same pace.  Now this might be truer for 5000 meter races, but not true for longer such distances.  My experience has been do not increase effort.  Stay where you are at and manage mile to mile.  I found the pace basically stays the same and you don't have to start this part of the sequence until much later when the slicks are starting to spin.

 That's how it went today.  I grew fatigued, but just stayed the same and in fact told myself to relax and go easy.  What happens many times is I am running 30 seconds faster a mile at the end when it feels like 30 seconds slower.  This is related to the title of the blog.  This is what subconsciously happens.  How far to the barn.