Officially kicking off marathon training today. Todd inspired. I don't know which one I'm going to do, but I have decided I'm going to turn my focus to the road marathon for the next 4-5 months. Todd is doing New York, and is about 12 weeks out. I was kind of stoked today to find out we were only doing 6:00 mile pace! Nice and easy! I felt like I was cheating or slacking off or something only running 6:00 pace, after being so focused on 4:40 pace for the last month or so. And there is a BIG difference between those two paces. Granted we were doing 1K repeats. But...it was a lot easier effort. ~3 miles warm up, stretch. 8 x 1K repeats with 45-50 seconds rest in between each. ~3.5 miles cooldown. Splits for the 1K's: 3:51, 3:30, 3:35, 3:33, 3:46, 3:39, 3:42, 3:40 We were working on hitting them in 3:43-3:53 range. Took us a few to dial it in, we were going a bit hot at first, but then we got it dialed pretty well. Still only 2 out of the 8 were in the range, but I guess we're both still so used to doing faster intervals its hard to slow down to that pace. The pace range we were hitting was 5:37 up to 6:11. We averaged about 5:54 pace (3:40's per K). So a little faster than goal marathon pace, but not much. It was a good run, getting used to doing the pace. But doing a 2:34 marathon (5:54 pace) is a little faster than both of our goals at this point. My goal right at this moment is to prep for a sub 2:45. But I would really like to be in the sub 2:40 range on my first marathon. I just think that sounds cooler I guess. But considering it will be my first road marathon, I may cut myself some slack/be a little more realistic, and just stick with the 2:45 goal. What I'd really like to do is run a sub 2:30, and eventually faster. But I'm not going to be forcing/rushing anything on that front, since realistically that's going to take some very consistent training and experience at the distance/pace that I shouldn't be expecting to be able to get to in one training cycle. I do have a growing desire to get to that point over the next couple years though. | 