Training Assessment

I feel like I've been training for the Disney Marathon for a long time already due to the fact that I started training for the World Wide Half at the end of June. Either I'll benefit from having the base miles or I'll be so tired of training by the end of this that I'll blow up. Only time will tell. In the meantime I thought I'd do a quick assessment of where I am as I head into the 4 month countdown to Disney. First I'll start with training and then talk about fundraising.

Training has been tough up to this point and much of that is due to the weather. It hasn't been all bad, but the percentage of runs that have been "not fun" at the least to "torturous" at th worst has gone up dramatically. It's starting to cool off so I'm hoping that will change in short order. I'm also a bit frustrated and confused. The advice I'm getting from my coach is that I should start running goal pace runs as part of my long runs now. I've been doing that, but I'm not always able to maintain my desired pace. It's tough to get yourself up to running goal pace alone and the course I'm running is fairly hilly and doesn't lend well to fast running. I'm hoping that my ability to hold goal pace will improve over time. Right now I'm just doing the best I can.

Under the frustrated and confused category I'm also doubting that I can run a Boston qualifying race. It's still way early for such thoughts, but it isn't helping with my training. I need to find a way to balance out this desire to run fast and still maintain a level of enjoyment that makes this work worthwile. Today I had a good run which makes me feel a little better. I must have been in the zone. I was going back over my splits and panicked for a moment. I couldn't remember running part of my normal route. I know I did it because of the time, and I'm remembering enough now that I know I did it. It was just a weird feeling for a moment to have forgotten an entire section of my run. I don't know if that's good or bad. I think I need to change my route and shake things up. I warmed up 2 miles at a 8:20 pace. Ran the next 3 miles at a 7:44 pace followed by the tough hill section dropping to a 9:36 pace. I'm not surprised after yesterday's biking and finally finished the final 2 miles with an 8:35 pace.

Fundraising for Team in Training is going okay. I'm up over $500, which is good. I'm just freaking out a bit. I've still got over $3000 to go. I'm going to shoot for $1000 a month. Now I just have to figure out how I'm going to get there!!

Tomorrow I'll be racing the Mercy Metric 10k race. My goal for the event is to break 42 minutes. That would be a pace under 6:45. It's going to be a tall order after a tough week of training.