Now that I’ve sent in my registration for the Scenic 10, I’m feeling the pressure to get trained and ready. I’m definitely being careful not to re-injure myself, but I need a bigger daily mileage base. I did 4 miles this morning, and while that’s OK, it only brings me to 10 overall for the week, and that’s not good. My original plan had me doing more than twice that.
On the plus side, I seem to be able to regain my speed more easily than I expected to. I “budgeted” for 12:00/miles all the way through the race and psyched myself up for that to be OK even though it’s really slow for me under non-injured conditions. But the 4 miles I ran today came out to 40:29, and that was with a few breaks to stretch. I kept up between an 8:30/mile and a 9:00/mile pace for a large portion of the run. And I feel fine now — no twinge-iness or anything.
I may struggle to finish the full 10 miles on Labor Day, but I’ll probably be able to do the first 5 or 6 at an easy 10:00/mile pace, which will leave me plenty of time to come in under 2:00:00 even if I need several walk breaks in the last half of the race.
Good. Now that I think it through like that, I’m feeling better about doing this. Of course, I still hope I can make it in under 1:50:00, but that seems like a lot to wish for right now. 🙂
You are awesome! I’ve always wanted to run a marathon, but I just got seriously into running a few months ago, so I think I’ve got a little while before I can do that.
… judging by our interests, and therefore places we like to be and things we like to do, I’d bet money that I’ve run into you more times than is reasonable.
Could be. Are you still in Nashville or are you elsewhere?
Yeah, I’m not attempting a marathon until next October. I plan to do the 10-mile race this September, the 13-mile half-marathon in April 2005, and the full 26-mile marathon in October 2005.
But first I have to get through this race without killing myself. 🙂
I’m in Nashville until the morning of the 26th.