Eat Drink Run Woman

I’ve been playing a numbers game. I’m about to embark on some hard-core training in my quest to qualify for Boston (goal time of 4 hours, 59 seconds), but I have not established a good baseline. Although I have two marathons under my, er, feet, neither demonstrated what I’m truly capable of (after all, I don’t intend to drink wine or take pictures with Disney characters at North Olympic). Therefore, I have to use my best guesstimate. But what do I base it on? My best 5K time? 10K? Half marathon? Best 15K-30K training run? They all predict different outcomes when plugging in the numbers on the MacMillan Running Calculator.

I originally estimated my time at 4:30-4:40, but recent runs have had me question this. So I plugged in my best times for seven different distances, coming up with projected marathon times ranging from 4:20-4:40. Just when I settled on a middle-of-the-pack time (4:32), I decided I should run a 15K “race” to see if I could improve on that time. (In other words, I chose to run around Greenlake for 9.3 miles as fast as I could. Not the same as true race conditions, but it was close and the price was right!). My goal was to average 9-9 1/4 minute miles.

I’ve managed to convince my darling to join me on my BQ quest (he too will attempt a BQ), so rather than run together we ran in opposite directions, high fiving each other as we crossed paths. Although I wore my Garmin, I was determined not to look at it. Rather, I wanted my body to indicate when I should speed up and slow down.

I could tell I went out a bit fast, so I slowed it down a tad. I was surprised when I passed my darling just before we hit the halfway point (I assumed I’d see him a lot sooner given he’s a much faster runner). This was definitely the toughest run I’ve done in a long time, but I forced myself to continue on, even when the wind hit me head-on. When I passed my darling the second time, he said he had gone out too fast; I felt I was about to cough up a lung by then so I couldn’t tell him that I too had gone out too fast (I have a hard enough time talking when running at a slow pace).

I got to the east edge of the lake and the wind picked up again (by now it would have been a little over four miles). The run was really starting to get tough, but I was hesitant to slow (I thought I was just barely making my goal pace at that point). I rounded the south end and saw my darling; he motioned that he’d only be doing two laps since he had gone out too fast. He then decided to turn around and run the rest of the way with me.

The wind really picked up, and of course I was running into it. I spoke nary a word to my darling, other than to tell him to NOT say how fast we were running. I also had decided I’d only be running two laps as well. However, I wanted to make sure I’d finish strong. It seemed to take forever to get to the end, but I somehow made it.

My darling joined me on the bench as I downed a ClifShot and drank two bottles of water. I wanted to get in 100 miles for the month, and I was still shy a little over a mile. So I decided I’d take one more slow lap along the inside track (2.8 miles). I was shocked to see I had averaged an 8:40 pace for the 10K (and had run the first mile in 8:18); no WONDER I was sucking wind! My heart rate averaged 166, although I had gotten it up to 176 during the last .39 miles.

After resting for about seven minutes I bid adieu to my darling and took off. My legs immediately started protesting and I was overcome with dizziness, but I was soon able to shake it off. Although my pace was definitely slower for the first mile, it wasn’t considerably slower. By mile two I was feeling really good and picked up my pace. I figured I’d run 2.91 miles to make my entire run for the day an even 15K. I was once again shocked to see I averaged a 9:04 pace for the third lap.

Once back at the house I was eager to plug in my numbers into MacMillan. Based upon my 10K time, it projected a 4:12:57 marathon time. But when I added the two runs together for a 15K time, I was down to a 4:07:47 projected time! Obviously I can’t bank on that, but at least it tells me I don’t have as far to go as I originally thought. I will be running a couple of tune-up races during my training to help me gauge my progress and better project my finishing time.

Come back often to see how I’m doing!