As most have seen by my post early Tuesday morning, the events on Monday really affected me and hit close to home. However, instead of letting it get the better of me, I have refocused on my running and training levels. Personally, I feel the best way to honor all those that were intimately involved is to continue to do the thing that they were all there for, running. So I have decided that not only am I going to run the Half Marathon on May 12th, but I am going to start training to try to run the Maine Marathon in Portland Me on October 6th 2013. I have not signed up or paid for it yet, the deadline to do it is June 30th, so I have some time to see how my body reacts to increasing my long run mileage to 26.2 miles.
Some people are going to ask, is this an attempt to run the Boston Marathon? Well, the Boston Marathon is NOT an open event. You need to either qualify or run for charity (or be a Bandit runner). I do not really know any charities that have put people in the Marathon before, if you know of one please let me know and I will happily volunteer my legs to run for them. So, unless that happens, I will have to try to qualify. Now the really hard part, for someone my age you need to run a qualifying marathon under 3:10:00. That equals to about a 7:15 mile for 26.2 miles. Good news, the Maine Marathon is a qualifying event! Bad news, 7:15 is a little over my 5K time. So I am not looking to qualify this year, but I want to get the marathon experience.
I have run three days in a row again this week. Tuesday was a 5 am 8 miler, Wednesday was a 4.75 5 pm hill run, and today (Thursday) was another 5 am 8 miler. Tuesday was an interesting run, I started out at an 80% run after my whole wheat bagel breakfast. I found myself lost in my thoughts about the events that had taken place some 15 hours earlier. Before I knew it, i was cruising at a pretty solid pace, probably closer to 90% effort, but it didn't feel like it. Perhaps my endurance has started to change as I have been working hard to be ready for the half marathon. All I know is I felt really good after a sub 8 minute mile, 8 mile run.
Wednesday was not so good. Mainly because I took my dogs on the hill/speed run. The dogs were HORRIBLE on this run. They were pulling in opposite directions, stopping every 2 minutes.....The good thing was that I ran this after work and it was a beautiful day, in the low 60's. It was great to get out in nicer weather to try to work with looser muscles. Tuesday was ok, in the low 40's in the morning, but running in 60 degree weather is nice. Quick turn around to Thursday morning and a breakfast of toaster waffles with peanut butter and a banana lead me to a great workout. I mixed some really fast half miles in to an 8 mile run to exhaust my legs so I could work on tired leg form. I feel really good about how that work out went and how it will contribute to my overall endurance and speed in the next few weeks.
So, my plan. As of right now I will be out for a 5am ish 13 mile run on Saturday. Then it will be packing and heading to Hartford to board a plane bound for Orlando Fl! I will try to post how I am feeling after hopefully hitting this major milestone for me while in the airport. However, if I do not get the chance you can always check out my workout page on Mapmyrun.com to see if I was able to make my goal. My ID is tomrup815 and my maps are open to the public so you do not need a login to see how far I got. You can also follow me on Twitter, @rupboysdad, and I will tweet my run results.
Enjoy your week and you will hopefully hear from my again when I am a little bit more tan!
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