I just completed my 20 miler this morning.  It was a good opportunity to simulate race day conditions.  I got started a little after 6:00, which is when the Vegas Marathon is scheduled to begin.  The temperature was in the mid 50s.  That matched up with what the average temperatures are in Las Vegas in early December.  They have pretty much the same weather patterns as Phoenix.

Anyway, I was shooting for pace of 9:00 min/mile. After one hour, I was pretty much right on the money.  Made a very quick stop at the house to refill my water bottles and took off on the second of my 3 loops.  Hit the 10 mile mark in 1:29:10. That translated to an 8:55 pace. I felt pretty good at that point, and was still on track to maintain that pace as I stopped at the house for one last refill on the water.  I had 6.5 miles to go.  As I got started on my last loop, I figured it would be a good test to see how well I could run my planned marathon pace at the end of my run. So I decided to run miles 16, 18 and 20 at around 8:40 and back off to 9:00 on miles 17 and 19.  Long story short, the splits went as follows - 8:31, 8:54, 8:46, 9:05, and 8:25.  Not too bad.  I think I could have held at least 9 minute pace for several more miles without crashing either.  Best of all, no sign of leg cramps.

Finishing time not including the two very brief pit stops was 2:57:21 (8:52 pace).  Right now, it looks like things are on track.  One more 20 miler in two weeks and then it will be time to start throttling back. Looking forward to that.  Hope everyone has a good workout today.  Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Talk to you soon.