The journey to this point has been a long one and looking back I have a nice combination of sweet and bitter memories to trace my path to this point. I would say this particular journey began last year around the time I did the 2010 Frederick Half-Marathon on May 2nd. I was trying to think about what pace I wanted to run the race and I decided "Hey, I'd be cool to qualify for Boston someday, I'll stick with the 3:10 pace group... 7:15 pace can't be that hard, right?"
I ended up going with that plan. Unfortunately for me the first half of the course was much easier than the second half so the pacers ran at 7 minute mile pace for at least 6 miles, because that is where I dropped off the pack and ran my own race to finish with a dismal time of 1:44:25 (7:58min/mi). At that point I don't exactly remember what I thought. I think half of me really really wanted to still qualify for Boston but another part of my had serious doubts.
I ended up taking some time off and then started into the good old summer base training routine. During that last week of May and through August I managed to tally up around 650 miles. For a below average high school runner (2:12/5:17/20:40 for 800m/1600m/3mi) that was a pretty big achievement for me. I would say it is about that time that I decided to look into this whole Boston Qualifier thing again.
I started to slowly increase my weekly milage but mainly my long run. I started out one day planning to go for a 10 miler, but I missed the 5 mile turn around so I ended up doing 12. Surprisingly I felt pretty good. To weeks later I tried 14, then later 16, and one late summer day I set out and did 4x5 mile loops through my neighborhood. What was this? I felt pretty damn good!
It would be a while before I did another 20 miler, and in fact I only did two more. One in Early December and one in Early January. So looking forward to the real subject of this post (my first Marathon) I know my endurance will be a problem, but I'll have to deal with it. Other than that I certainly can't be disappointed with my progress along the way.
I took my 3 mile PR of 20:40 in high school and in my first serious race after the summer training ran 18:54. Then I ran 19:10 a short while later. I knew at least I was getting a little faster I could tell, even though I did no speed work other than tempo runs. Then I went to the Summers Farm 5K in October and ended up winning with a 17:59. A few things were significant about this race. For one, 17:59 is a pretty decent 5K time. I'm not going to win any championships with that time, but it also seemed like I wasn't just "one of the crowd" anymore, I was starting to be a decent runner for once, something I was not used to. Secondly, it was my first real race victory ever, if you don't count those JV race victories in high school.
With that said the course was measured with a guy to be way short, as I expected since I felt pretty relaxed the whole time. But it was still happy with it. So going into the Frederick Waystation Turkey Trot I knew I had something to prove to myself: I could run under 18 on a course I could be relatively certain was really 5 kilometers.
Check on that, I ran 17:58. A few weeks later I ran 17:54 (5:45min/mile) on another legitimate course. Fast forward to February 27th, and I ran 1:04:13 for RRCA 10 miler. Woah!!! That's 6:25min/mile less than a year after I considered 7:00min/mile impossible to keep up for 13 miles. I could safely say that speed would not be a problem anymore. So what might be? Endurance.
December was actually a pretty decent month for training. I got in a 20 miler and averaged 55 miles per week with 2 weeks at or over 60 miles. Since then however I have ran ~410 miles, with some weeks unaccounted for on some days for an average of 37 miles per week. And only one 20 miler. I can chalk this up to various nagging minor injuries that I took time off to allow to heal before they became serious or some type of seasonal affective running disorder where the winter months make me hate running most days. No matter what excuses I make it doesn't change what will happen on race day though. I will either have it around mile 18 or I will not. And after the race then that will be the time to see what I can improve on. But for now, I'll just have to hope Emil Zátopek is looking down from way up there and when he sees things getting tough for me he can help me to remember that "It's at the border of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys" and I can be able to find that last gear.
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