9 miles is still a long way

Well, I decided instead of two posts, I would take this post and combine it.  I had originally planned to put down early in the year what my training goals were for 2010 as a post out here and never managed to get back to it.  So, here we go:

• Run a 5K under 20 minutes (6:20 or faster)
• Run a 10K under 42 minutes (6:45 or faster)
• Run 10 miles in under 1:10:00 (7:00 or faster)
• Run a half marathon in under 1:38:19 (basically faster than 7:30)
• Run more than 1200 miles in the year (averaging more than 23 miles per week)
• Run three half marathons in 2010
• Find a race per month so that I’ve run 12 races in 2010.  This one will be very hard.  I have to bite the bullet and run more 5K to handle winter and summer runs or find some locations further north and travel.  Can’t say this is even possible on my body.

I don’t know if any of these are even remotely possible.  It’s asking for 15 seconds per mile off each pace, give or take, from my PR in each of the distances.  I hope it is, and if not, I hope to at least learn the lessons associated with why I didn’t make it.  The 5K is the most challenging, considering my PR is almost 22 minutes.  That’s a bigger jump, but I also keep telling myself that the 2009 PR was based on having to stop to cough violently and if I had avoided that, it might have been closer to 20 minutes and a 15 second per mile pace anyway.  So, I put it out here and I’ll review as I run this year to see if I’m going to make any of those goals.

Started out this year really badly.  I have already made my first alteration to the training program I tried to cook up.  I am giving up on trying to make the long run faster.  I’m going to hope the hill climbing and speed work makes me faster and the long runs will stay at 8:00 miles.  I strained my right calf trying to run below 8:00 miles and it cost me another week of training.  ARGH!  At least I was doing something though.  I am not one to really go out on a limb and advertise any exercise program, but I made the deliberate choice to install one hundred pushups and two hundred sit ups onto my iPhone. I know I need much more core work and this is my best way to force the issue.  The phone gives me a three day per week program and a 5 set routine for each day.  I’ll work through these and then decide if I choose to add the other two this same development team has on squats and chin ups.  I do know that for the two I did buy, there’s variations on form I can use to keep them fresh once I can do each milestone in the default form.  But, it let me stay active while I was letting my leg rest.  I’ll just have to keep an eye on things and hope for the best.

So, the title of this post really says it all.  I haven’t reached that point when 9 miles doesn’t feel like an eternity of running.  At 8:00 per mile, that’s 72 minutes of running and by the end of it I am wiped.  If I’m going to make it to a marathon, I’ve got to get to some point where 9 miles doesn’t feel like a long distance.  I don’t know what that will take, but that seems to be the benchmark.  I knew, for example, that I was a 10K runner when I considered 3 miles a short run.  I knew I was a half marathon runner when I considered 10K a short run.  I am guessing internally that until I look at a 10 mile race as a short run, I’m not really a marathoner, and for now I’m just hoping that 9 miles will seem short at some point.  Of course, having tried to run those 9 miles faster than 8:00 per mile and hurting my calf in the process probably hasn’t helped that perspective.  I’m hoping deciding to move back to 8:00 will change the perception.  I do know the run this past weekend was 9 miles and I made it without killing my leg, so we’ll see.

More to come as I approach the next race.  Cheers!