Last summer, when I was training for the New York City Marathon, I mapped out a route for my 10 mile long run.

It was kind of a square - if I ran out to the nearby rail trail (the Cochituate Rail Trail) into Natick and then back along the Marathon route to Framingham, I would hit 10 miles on my way back to my house along the main road that cuts through the center of Framingham.

I miscalculated, though, and hit 10 miles a solid two miles away from home.

So it was a long walk to get back.

I remember it being painful, too, so I guess I was in worse shape last year? Or maybe it was just from many more car rides for all those Mets games.

Regardless, this week I had a 12-mile long run, so I knew I had a 12 mile route ready to go.

Unfortunately, Friday night someone posted about a closure that affected part of the rail trail.

…I didn’t expect the route to be so poorly identified.

I figured I would just go my planned route and worry about the detour when I got there.

As it turned out, the (poorly marked) detour added enough to the run that I finished about a mile-ish away from home (I think I would have been walking a half-mile-ish home anyway).

But that’s about the only bad news for this long run.

I am feeling really strong right now.

It’s interesting, the rhythm of the marathon training sessions that I’ve gone through. We’re at a point now that I’ve been before: I am impressed at myself for running 12 miles, but I also feel like there’s not enough time for me to double this. (Or to get strong enough to more than double it, since eventually I’m running 26.2 miles.)

I guess it’s important to remind you - and myself - that if I was doing a typical training session, maybe it might be too late to build up from here and then taper.

But I am not going to taper. I am only getting up to 20 miles - or, I should say, the 20-mile week is going to be my marathon week.

Which I’m feeling pretty good about. I remember my 12-mile long run the last time I trained for Chicago feeling this way. And then I ran that 20-mile run and felt so good I wished the race was that day. So I changed my thinking about training.

I’ve also changed a little bit about how I’m thinking about my timing as I run.

In order to run a sub-5 hour marathon, I need to run somewhere around an 11:10/mi pace. I can get caught up in the minutia of the miles, thinking about 11 minutes and 11 minutes only. Sometimes I run too fast, thinking if I get a couple of 10:40s in there (or faster, unfortunately), it’ll even out.

That never works, and I know it never works, and yet here we are. I flew (relatively speaking) through the first 16 miles of the New York City Marathon but - 16 miles! That’s nothing to sneeze at! - BUT it’s not a 16-mile pace I need to think about.

I’ve told you all this before.

What I haven’t told you is I think I’m going to start thinking about the race in 8-mile chunks.

I don’t know why this sticks out to me but I guess it’s because I’ve been running a bunch of 8-mile-ish runs recently.

If I run 8 miles in an hour and a half I’m in great shape.

That means I’ll be at 3 hours at 16 miles. And 4:30 at mile 24, if all goes well.

And if I’m at 4 hours and 30 minutes at mile 24, I’ll make those final 2.2 miles happen in less than a half hour somehow some way.

I have a list of my mile times for a bunch of different races, just for comparison’s sake. Mixed in there is “Great Chicago Training Run” - my 20-miler. I was at 3:44:37 at 20 miles there. Do the math - that means if I was at mile 16 in around 3 hours, I would be at mile 20 in 3:45. I was 23 seconds ahead of my new goal pace.

I think that is entirely replicable for me this time around - everything is going really well. Including the 12-miler on Saturday. That’s what I was supposed to be here to tell you.

There was a slight twinge in my left hip Saturday morning that gradually went away as I ran. I think that’s telling me I need to do a better job with my strength training. It was not an injury twinge - it was a weakness twinge. I have learned to tell the difference. At the most it’s a ‘too much sitting in a car’ twinge.

And really that’s been the only twinge I’ve been feeling (knocking wood frantically). Here’s how the week went, then I’ll tell you some more:

Monday: 3.75 miles, 11:05/mi

Tuesday: 8.88 miles, 1:39:13 total time. Intervals day. I wrote about this - the most eventful thing was the ear situation. But the intervals also went well.

Wednesday: 4 miles, 10:54/mi. My plan had me running 3 miles today, the day after the intervals, and 3-4 miles on Friday, the day before my long run. I didn’t think it would matter much if I flipped those, since I had more flexibility Wednesday afternoon to run more, and Friday I would have an easier time getting the 3 in before work.

Thursday: 20 minutes Strength for Runners workout

Friday: 3 miles, 11:47/mi

Saturday: 12 miles, 11:16/mi

Last week I told you there were more miles on the horizon in week 7. I did not realize quite how big a jump we’d be dealing with.

But this has been a really gradual build…and like I told you last week, it’s kind of insane how much I’m running in those mid-week interval runs.

Which, I think that’s on me for not putting in that kind of time before.

It’s wild that with my schedule the least flexible it’s been in a decade, I’ve been able to squeeze in much more training time.

But it’s clear that all of these miles are paying off.

I don’t fully understand the body and how all of this works. I don’t know if it would be helpful to know more or if I know enough with my simple understanding, which is this:

These plans work. They make me stronger and I can run more miles than I have ever run before in my life. Lately, I have also been running those miles as strong as I felt leading up to my first marathon, which was pretty strong and pretty healthy.

Next week is another slight drop-back before we hit 14 miles for a long run in two weeks.

Those numbers sometimes intimidate me because I think, “Am I ready to run that kind of mileage again?”

This time around, because of how well it’s all been going, I’m kind of excited about it - it’s more like, “How strong can I feel running that kind of mileage again?”

Total Miles for Week 7: 34.63 (almost double last week)

Total Miles Overall: 157