Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Goal Time and Tempo Runs

I have not posted here as regularly as I had hoped, but I am still working towards my goal. In fact, I am approaching the end of my training with only three more weeks to go before my tapper.

The question still remains: will I be able to break three hours.

I am still not sure what the answer will be. I would like to say that I will easily reach my goal and run something fantastic like 2 hours 52 minutes or something like that. Rather, it is more likely that if I do break three hours, it will only be by a few seconds at most. Weather will have a large part to play. If it is hot, then I will not be able to do it. If the temperature is in the 50s or low 60s, then I have a shot.

In these last few weeks, I have been getting in my tempo runs and the times have been improving a bit, but the hot weather we’ve had this summer here in Chicago has really slowed me down. For instance, I did a tempo run back in March/May and was able to run about 6:36 per mile pace. Just a few weeks ago, I ran 6 miles at about the same per mile pace. I feel that I am much stronger now, though, because I found that pace much easier to maintain and temperature was in the 70s to low 80s with fairly high humidity, whereas the conditions this spring were in the 40s/50s with very little humidity. Also, I ran an additional two miles at that pace, and I suspect that I was going closer to 10K race pace while running my first few tempo runs this spring.

As the weather cools, I hope to bring my tempo times down even more. Ideally, I would like to be able to run just under 6:30 pace for at least my last two tempo runs. I feel that would indicate that I have the fitness to just break three hours.

The bigger test, though, will be hitting my goal race pace on some longer marathon race pace training runs I have planned. I ran 14 miles last week with about 8 of them at around a 7:00 to 7:05 pace. That is a lot faster than what I was running last year, but not at the 6:51 pace I need to just break three hours. I hope that as the weather cools, I can push the pace a bit and run a little farther at that goal pace.

If I do not break three hours, I may still be able to beat my PR of 3:02:xx. I suppose that would be good enough to keep me motivated for next year’s training.

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