Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Time to move on to my half assed marathon training....

I say this because all season I have trained to peak at HIMs...and now I want to at least hit my Boston qualifying time of 3:40. I have no desire to run Boston, but I think it would be cool to know I could if I wanted to. I've increased my mileage well but with swimming and biking I haven't been able to focus on run speed work as much as I would have liked. The energy just hasn't been there to do it all.....so alas I'll try to cram in what I can in these last few weeks while still trying to train *smart*.

Wednesday - 8.4 mile marathon "race pace" run
I don't know what I was thinking when I mapped out the route I ran, oh I know, I wasn't thinking at ALL. I've run this route many times and know how hilly it is. PDX marathon is pretty flat but does have a hill or two towards the end, or so I hear. So I figured why not test out "race pace" on this route. Poor choice now that I think about. I got up at my normal morning run time; 4:45am. Got dressed, put my hair up, stepped into my turbo rocket Asics, grabbed a glorious on-the-go breakfast of Power Gel and hit the open roads. My legs felt fantastic! My energy did not. Quickly I sucked down Strawberry Banana slime hoping the caffeine would give me a little up and up....and thankfully it did. Finished the run with a 8:10 avg, 10 sec per mile faster then I was shooting for, although my HR was waaaaaaay too high for too long. I avg'd 172 and I'm not sure I'm comfortable holding that for a full marathon, for me 160-165 feels key. Well see how the next few weeks play out. I'm going to miss tri training but will keep swimming and cycling on my cross training days.

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