Doing What I Can

8 easy on a really nice night, 7:17 avg pace

easy 6.35 tonight

decent run, 5.5 in 7:32 avg pace

4.15 this morning, felt okay

easy pre-race 3 miles + strides

Decided to run the Colorado Marathon today just 3 weeks after Boston. Felt I was in PR shape at Boston, but the warm weather made me adjust my goals. Goal today was to go as quick as possible and PR as big as possible. Pre-race stuff went pretty much normal all week. Got up at 3am and drove up to Fort Collins to catch the luxury bus to the start line. The Colorado Marathon loses about 1000 feet of elevation, so they drive us up to the start, which is up in the mountains and really pretty that early in the morning watching the sun come up. weather up there was pretty good mid to upper 40s and it stayed cloudy through about 17-18 miles. After that it was starting to get pretty warm pretty quick. My watch couldn't find the GPS signal at the start so I had to just do the watch time, then I reset it and tried to find the GPS signal again by the one mile mark, but it wasn't working so I just set it to keep time and so not only was my watch time one mile short the whole race, but I don't know how to keep manual splits, so I had to do all the math in my head the whole race (or at least for the first twenty or so miles). I do remember a few splits: 10 mile was somewhere near 1:05:xx, half marathon was 1:26:06, 1:38:xx at 15 miles. Half split was actually a little slower than I was hoping for. I will say that I definitely still "felt" Boston in my legs as I just was kinda worn throughout the first half. The first half contained most of the downhill, after that the course levelled off and even had some hills. I struggled at about 22 miles and actually came to a full stop at the 22nd mile marker. Just up-and-stopped and took about a 10 second rest before continuing on. I thought that since I had stopped there, that I would keep stopping (as so usually happens if you stop once) but I was happy with the fact that once I restarted, I ran the rest of the way and stayed relatively close to pace, although mentally and physically I was struggling that last 4 miles. I turned up the street to finish and the official clock was way off, so I could tell I had PR'd by my watch (even though it was off), but I wasn't exactly sure by how much or what my time was. It was kind of cool to go look at the results and be surprised at what I saw: 2:55:11, which was later revised to 2:55:10 officially. 6:40 avg pace, a new PR by almost 2 full minutes! I was very happy with that and its always nice to get a new PR, but that rest break cost me a sub-2:55 and a 10+ min BQ!! Oh well - If I hadn't just run Boston three weeks ago, I probably could have gone much faster anyway. Definitely not running another marathon til next year's Boston most likely. Going to do Bolder Boulder and then take some time off in June. Overall, a good race and something I'm proud of. Just not the smartest thing to do two races in three weeks (despite the PR today, I am sure I will be sorry tomorrow!)

6.3 this morning, a little sore but not terribly bad, 7:46 pace

decent run, though started feeling rougher at the end. nice fine misty rain the whole time. ice bath

tough run tonight, just felt kinda rough, not sure of pace as my watch was on the fritz again - 7:16 pace for what I was able to get + strides

10 on a beautiful iowa morning out on the bike trail, 7:2X pace

still feeling good, 8 plus strides - can't remember pace

was going to do around 7, but ended a little early - i was beat, just kept stopping and was soaked in sweat. had 2 miles at GMP

last run in carlisle, probably should have just taken the SRD. had a hamburger and fries at lunch and tried to run 3 hours later in the 85 degree heat with humidty, had some big time problems. scrapped together 5.1

good workout tonight back in Colorado. 6x800 at 2:44, 2:45, 2:43, 2:43, 2:44, 2:43 with a jogged 400 in between each (about 2:00-2:30 active recovery) felt hard effortwise but doable, nice to see a little bit of speed, 9.3 total with w/u and c/d

10.5 tonight in a driving snowstorm...in mid-May, 7:16 avg pace, felt okay despite the cold and wind and wetness, +Strides

nice run tonight, 11 in 7:20 avg pace, felt really easy + strides

morning run, felt just ok, 7 in 7:36 avg pace

good run tonight on a cold rainy night, first 6 roughly GMP, the last 2 of them were around 6:44 pace, 7:00 overall pace for the run - a little over 1:01 + strides

easy pace run tonight, legs felt kinda tired though, 7:18 avg pace, ice bath after

easy run tonight, 6.4 in 7:26 pace, felt pretty tired, taking tomorrow off + strides today

5.8 today, felt ok + strides, 7:31 avg pace

4.75 this morning, felt kinda tired still, 7:31 avg pace, started raining on me the 2nd half, going for a sub-37 at BolderBoulder

3.5 easy this morning, bolderboulder tomorrow + strides

my 2nd Bolder Boulder today. around 2.2 warmup. A wave kicked off right at 6:55 as scheduled, goal was to go under 37 minutes, and given the absolutely perfect weather (49-51 degrees, almost no wind), I thought I would have a shot at it -- especially given my recent high mileage. However, what I failed to realize beforehand was all the marathon training I've been doing the past 5 months has sapped quite a bit of my speed. 6:00 felt like good, both sustainable but decent effort-wise, but I just had no other gear to kick it into like I do when I do speed training. My watch splits and the official splits were at odds with each other, so I will just go with what they had:

1 - 6:01.6

2 - 6:01.7

3- 6:16.7

4- 6:06.8

5- 5:56.1

6 -6:05.6

change - 1:25 (really was disappointed with my effort here)

Total - 37:53, 6:06 avg pace

Overall- I can't be too disappointed with this result. It's slower than last year by about 30 seconds, and certainly off my goal for this race, but at the same time, I am at 1110+ miles at the end of May, which for me is extremely high + I ran 2 marathons within 3 weeks between 3 and 6 weeks ago. I could feel in my training that my top-end speed wasn't there and I hadn't been doing speedwork, so this is probably the best I could do at this tough course today. I could feel the endurance training kicking in as I still feel like I had more miles to go at the end (though probably would have kept clicking away that same 6:06 pace). Trying to get one more 10k in next weekend before I leave for Europe for the summer. It is downhill, so will benefit from that and see if I can open up my pace a little (will be good for confidence if nothing else).

7.2 tonight, 7:20 avg pace  + strides