Tuesday, April 20, 2010

My Bum Marathon...

Well, I'm back from SLC and running my marathon.

I trained for 3 months and was faithfull to all my runs, only missing some once I ingured myself by tripping over Grace about three weeks ago. I initially thought I strained my left hamstring and so I lowered my mileage and also favored the leg during the running I was allowed.

Which put more strain on my right knee. (I think I actually hurt my knee when I stumbled and the extra responsibility I gave it while trying to heal my hamstring progressed the ingury.)

I really wanted to try for a four hour marathon and felt that based on my performance during training it was a completely reasonable. I was comfortably running 18 miles at a 10 minute pace and "according to my reading" that is what I should be doing during training to run a faster pace on race day. I only needed to pick up my pace by about 45 seconds per mile to meet my goal.

Running a four hour marathon is actually pretty average but the idea that I could do that with what was actually pretty laxadaisy training has made me think that if I spent a little time and effort I could expect to run even a 3:40 marathon. This is what I need to run in order to qualify for the Boston Marathon...and I kind of want to do that.

4 comments:

Mary Ann said...

So I guess the moral of the story is that Grace isn't a good running buddy?

Terra said...

She actually is a good running partner, but I need to be a little more aware of what she's doing and not take for granted that she's going to be in the same mind set as I am. She got spooked by a car and tried to change sides and I wasn't really paying attention to her when it happened.

Matthew said...

Will your marathon training tune you to do well on different kinds of runs than the bear?

If so, I am opposed.

Terra said...

I'm going to get a clean(ish) bill of health on my knee and then start my Bear training. I'll have to find some hills to practice on- it's really flat where I live. I'll be doing those lovely intervals as well. Blegh.