Notes
Armed with info from Leslie's Jack Daniels book about VDOT, and the philosophy of, "It is what it is." I met Dan at MLK and set out to try for a 9 mile run with 2 miles w/u, 5 miles "tempo" pace of 8:20 and 2 miles cool down. I managed to pull about an average of 8:41 instead of 8:20. Hmmm. That was with a good effort, but I did squeak out 5 miles of that. While on this run today, I realized I need to readjust my Boston Marathon time goals. So, going backwards this time, I looked up what marathon pace the Daniels VDOT of a 8:41 tempo pace would give me. I figured since this is the best effort I can put out right now I'd better make friends with it. This pace still gets the range into the 4 hr -- or just slightly over the 4 hr. marathon time. Actually, at this point I will be happy with getting to the starting line and then crossing the finishing line. I am also thinking though, that I can be pleased with a 4:30 time goal at Boston. That would still be faster than my first marathon. I am going to try to think along those lines and hopefully that will help me enjoy these last few weeks of training just a bit, and help with the pressure I feel. It's so hard though, when I think that when training for Columbus my tempo pace was a full minute faster than what I'm able to pull off now. It's maddening actually, and it is hard not to beat myself up over how things are now, but, of course when I do that it only gets worse. SO, these last few "tempo" runs will be hopefully at least this pace, and maybe next week I can do a tad faster. My leg is still a bother and I'm doing everything possible to take care of it. When I start out it's real bad, but by the end of the run it's completely fine.