Happy New Year running friends! If there is not an inversion and I’m healthy, I always try to get in a long slow distance run to start the year off. Everything worked out this morning in that the air was clear (but pretty cold when I headed out at 7:30 am) and I was feeling great after a good night of sleep; therefore, I was up to hitting the streets for some serious millage today. My aim was to take it an easy-rider pace (sub 9:00 minute mile pace) run for at least 26.2 miles.
To begin with, I ran to the Salt Lake Running Company and met up with the gang (as expected, a much smaller group--four total) and we ran down to Liberty Park and completed four laps before heading back to the store. After slipping into a dry pair of mittens (i.e., my ski gloves were not doing it), I ran the last five miles of the Salt Lake Marathon Course to Liberty Park, over to State Street, up to South Temple, then over to the finish line at The Gateway Mall. I then headed up to West High School and climbed the absolutely brutal 300-North hill up to the State Capital Building. In my book, this is the most difficult hill in Salt Lake City to climb and today was not exception. I proceeded by circling around to the mouth of City Creek Canyon before taking 11th Avenue and the rollercoaster bike path to the University of Utah Hospital. I reached the Olympic Legacy Bridge at exactly 25.2-miles into my run and my legs were feeling tired. Cutting out the Sugar House Park loop, I ran the first 8 miles of the Salt Lake Marathon Course before returning to home.
Overall, I was able to achieve a distance PR (by an even two miles) of 34.4 miles in a time of 5:05:38 (i.e., an average pace of 8:53). For the most part, I was able to keep the miles between 8:00 and 9:30. However, my last two full miles were 7:38 and 7:40, my only sub-8:00 miles for this run; therefore, I had a little bit of a kick left in my legs.
My daily non-running workout consisted of 300 sit-ups, 30 push-ups, and a 100-second wall-sit (I’m going to have to work up to three of these per day).
5-minute Plank Challenge: 2:00 (building up to another run at 2:40)
Okay, running at an 8:53 pace is certainly not going to help me PR in a marathon; however, I like to go on one of these runs once every so often because it allows me to clear my head and think about where I want to go with my running. During this run I came to the conclusion that for the first time in the five years that I have been running marathons, it’s going to be really difficult to PR in 2011 or in any year hereafter (i.e., my 2010 D-News Marathon was really an outlier from my normal running capabilities--in other words, a fluke). Not that I will not try to PR (i.e., I love the challenge), but I’m just trying to be a realist. Runners that run sub-2:40s are extremely talented and I absolutely admire (i.e., running at a sub-6:00 pace for 26.2 miles is just ridiculously fast). I also remembered that I got into running to have fun and to get into shape. Then I began to think about the Theory Of Constraints (TOC, a popular operations management concept) when trying to determine my 2011 running goals. My initial thoughts were that I need more hills and more intervals--more quality workouts while maintaining my weekly millage. Then I asked myself, why have I not been doing more hills and intervals? This personal inquiry led me to establish the following three goals for 2011:
- To improve my balance/agility (this has always been a weakness… I score terrible on these tests)
- To take constructive steps to eat healthier (I have been slowly improving my eating habits, but never really challenged myself to eat healthier)
- To get more quality sleep (sounds easy, but might be the most difficult of the three)
These are sort of sound like general goals, but I believe address my real constraints. If I improve in the areas of balance/agility and eating and sleeping habits, more hill and more interval workouts will be the result (at least this is my hypothesis). Will these goals ultimately result in a faster marathon, who knows… but I’m certain that it’s going to be fun to find out and I’m really looking forward to continuing to improve my conditioning in 2011. | 