{"id":94,"date":"2008-02-01T19:20:55","date_gmt":"2008-02-02T02:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/?p=94"},"modified":"2008-02-02T08:28:02","modified_gmt":"2008-02-02T15:28:02","slug":"faster-than-a-speeding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/?p=94","title":{"rendered":"Faster than a speeding…"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Come back often to see how I’m doing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beantown","category-pfitzinger-1855"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}