Time has flown again.
Here we sit in mid January 2011.
I wanted to revisit the goals I posted at the start of 2010.
- run 200 miles per month, so 2,400 for the year
- get below 3.10 at Boston
- sub 1.30 half to qualify for New York.
- sub 19.53 5K
- train smarter
Let's see.
I started out the year pretty aggressively. In hindsight probably too aggressively. I easily ran 200 miles / month January through March, with March over 300. And then - not surprisingly - I got injured.
Achilles tendonitis dominated the next 3 months of the year. I hardly ran at all - although I did run / walk Boston in an incredibly painful 3 hours and 45 mins. Easily my slowest marathon.
Then in July, after a trip to Africa, I started coming back. This time I did finally train smarter. I ran Chicago in the heat and got the sub 3.10 time I'd wanted out of 2010.
Because of the 3 months off - I didn't reach 2,400 miles - but I did run 2,217 - exactly 500 more than 2009.
As for the other time goals. I only ran 2 5Ks last year, but easily beat the 19.53 goal. I ran 18.36 in August. The same with the sub 1.30 half. I ran two, beat it both times, and currently have a PR of 1.26.23 which gets my guaranteed entry into New York.
Blogs are probably more for the person who writes them - a 21st century version of a diary - and I found it very interesting reading my post from a year ago and remembering my thought process at the time. As such I'm going to record something similar for my 2011 goals.
The biggest goal my far is to try to go sub 3 hour time in a marathon.
There are so many factors that can play a part in this - the course, weather, training, injuries and most of all - luck, that I don't know how realistic it is - but that's the main goal for this year.
I'm running Boston in April. I'm intending to take my first crack at it there. It's not an easy course, and it may be too soon - but having witnessed another friend in Chicago go in with the mantra 'sub 3 or over 4' and pull it off, I'm motivated to try the same thing. I'm planning to go all out and attempt it - and either make it - or blow up in the process...
I'm also planning on running the New York Marathon in November. That would be the 3rd leg of the 'World Majors' for me. Leaving just London and Berlin (hopefully 2012).
New York is definitely not renowned as a fast course - so I'm going to attempt to get into a more favourable race for a sub 3 (if I don't get it in Boston !) - St Georges - in October. It's a lottery system and so it's highly probably I won't make it, in which case I may look for an alternative.
As for non-marathon goals. I'd like to go sub 1.25 in the half, sub 18 in the 5K, sub 39 in the 10K (I've only ever run one so this may be a 'soft' goal).
I'm hoping to run another 500 mile PR - so over 2,717 miles, although more importantly - I want to continue to train smarter and hopefully stay injury free (don't we all ?!)
Run most of the runs slowly - or at least in line with the pace that Pfitz and other coaches suggest, and keep the faster miles for the tempo and pace runs.
I'm hoping this approach keeps me healthy and that I can then make use of my winter marathon training by hitting a few more of the fun races in the Spring. Colfax, Bolder Boulder, and perhaps even the Mount Evans Ascent.
The great thing about a new year is the 'fresh page' that we start with. It'll be interesting seeing how it turns out.
