Marathon Pace

Stress at work can be a great motivator. In my case, I had a lot of frustration to burn off, and even when I felt like cutting back my speed or ending early I thought about work and was inspired to run harder all over again.

Today's run was a 7-miler, with a 5-mile marathon pace run sandwiched between a 1-mile warmup and similar length cooldown. I was shooting for 8 minutes/mile and stayed fairly close to that. The temperature was up near 80 degrees and the sun came out just in time for my run. A nice breeze helped keep things cool.

I should have run yesterday. I got all dressed up and took the boy to baseball practice, but when the coach said it would be a quick one I decided to stick around and run either later or the next day. Practice lasted an hour and a half, which would have been plenty of time to get in my run. Yeah, I should have known better. The weather was perfect and I had plenty of energy. After all the conflict at work today plus having to interview five people, my energy level was down today and allergies were playing games with my sinuses. Nevertheless, it was good to get out and run and burn off a lot of stuff.

I have to realize that I'm in the middle of training and that the race itself will likely be cooler, but I felt today like there's no way I could keep up that pace for 26.2 miles. That's what I have to do, though, to get under the 3:30 mark. I wonder if that's a realistic goal? Plenty of guys my age can do it. I don't know, this might be the year for completing a couple more marathons and then adding to my training plan in order to reach that goal next year. I have a feeling it's going to take more mileage and dedication than I can offer this fall. As always, that feeling is subject to change tomorrow.