Nice Ass!
39,500 Miles Later
Also, it depends, to some extent, on your experience running marathons. You can train within an inch of your life, count all your miles into neat piles, stare at charts and predictions until your eyes fall out of your head, and still blow up mentally in the final 6.
True story.
MTA: You can blow up before that, too.
How do you keep your feet on the ground, when you know you were born to fly?
break'n three
This is so true.
But in addition to experience running marathons, I like to see a lot of experience racing. At all distances. Flat out motherfucking racing. When you start to see someone consistently banging out races at roughly their max capabilities--i.e. their race times start to predict each other really well up and down the spectrum using mcmillan and other bullshit and they almost never have a total meltdown and run significantly slower than you'd expect (barring weather calamity) that's when you know they've figured out racing and you can start to make some predictions. It's one thing to estimate what someone is physically cabable of, quite another to say what they'll actually do in a race.
This is one of the reasons I personally don't like the concept of running races as training runs--doing Half Marathons at MP etc. It's bad practice.
Racing is fucking hard. It is (simply put) not for everyone.
mta: and I'm not poking at anyone in particular with all that--there are people up and down the speed spectrum on this board who clearly know how to race...just agreeing and expanding on what TanyaS was saying about the mental aspect of racing.
Prince of Fatness
Yep. I had a few people on these boards telling me I could run 3:20 - 3:25 last month. I ran 3:40 and everyone knows the story, but the point is that I went for the 3:30 and was closer to that than what everyone else was saying. And that should not be a surprise, because no one knows me better than me.
Remember, the people here can only see your running log. They don't know what the weather is going to be like. They don't know whether you've got some personal shit going on, whether you've been sleeping enough, how you are eating, drinking, etc. But you know. So you have to decide.
All I can tell you from my limited experience is that the first 20 miles are relatively easy. It's those last 6.2 that I need to figure out. Good luck.
Oh, and Candice, you're a lock for sub 3. I can tell. Go for it.
There is a long dark road ahead of me.
shit, I honestly have serious problems with the first 3.
Holy shit, re-reading that rant I now see that I am showing symptoms of my own tweak.
Here I was all superior mocking all of you and it's happening to me. Again.
Wait, what? I have a marathon in 9 days and 21 hours? How the fuck did that happen?
Flat out motherfucking racing. Racing is fucking hard.
Flat out motherfucking racing.
Racing is fucking hard.
There's just one thing, Dude.
And what's that?
Do you have to use so many cuss words?
What the fuck you talking about?
Okay, Dude. Have it your way.
me too. keep your effin' tweakin to yourself.
Holy shit, re-reading that rant I now see that I am showing symptoms of my own tweak. Here I was all superior mocking all of you and it's happening to me. Again. Wait, what? I have a marathon in 9 days and 21 hours? How the fuck did that happen?
Heh. It's the logic of long distance.
In the fight between you and the world, back the world. --Kafka The Logic of Long Distance
We've Got Big Hills
It really does not matter how well you have trained, how successfully you have raced or how much you have impressed internet yahoos. In Indy on November 7, it will be 87 degrees, humid and sunny and you will be lucky to come in under 4 hours. Cuz that is just how these things work.
Criminy.
Faster, for sure. If you a little more pace specific work over the next two weeks, keep the miles up, sub 3:20 is not outside the realm of possibility.
I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.
Poor baby
What the fuck are you guys tweaking about.... I have a marathon in 3 gddmn days. Take that to the bank and cash it.
Who the fuck are you guys to be tweaking?!
OK, so I totally hijacked, Strings, I'm sorry, but it applies to both of us.
Candice - I know you mean what you said, and of course I immediately started re-re-re-thinking myself.
Maybe I could do 3:20. And maybe, if I can channel the hippie in me and run by feel, maybe I will get there accidentally (the weather should be perfect).
Mikey's right, and he wasn't directly talking to me. But he has in the past and I don't have the race experience that he's referring to. And I'm not willing to slide that far over on the "odds of success vs. odds of blowing up" pendulum. I'll be out of my mind happy with the 3:27:54 as it is if I get it. There will be more marathons, maybe Bay State next fall when I'm closer to home and can risk blowing up more. I've got to be OK with the fact that it's a process.
Plus there's the whole not wanting to get punched in the face by my wife thing.
And thanks Lank, I'll try not to disappoint.
mr train you are a pain, your words - they make me go insane
they strike my ever-thinking brain like little drops of acid rain
oh, to my life you are a bane; crazy, mixed up, mr train - r2e
You can blow stool before that, too.
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