Training blog, take 2

The marathon has come and gone. Had a great race- felt great, time was as good as I could have hoped (4:21), and enjoyed every bit of it. Enjoyed the training too, though you'd never have known it from checking in here. This started off as such a good idea last year, and interestingly, the more I ran, the less interested I became in the blog. But I really liked the total mileage thing, and as I racked up the miles in August and September, I wished I had kept up with it. After the race was done, I enjoyed going back and reading about the early days, when I ran only 1-2 miles at a time. Would have been nice to have a more complete account of all of my training.

So, here I am for round 2! Have made a verbal and psychological commitment to running next year's race as well- Chicago Marathon 2010- 10.10.10. A second chance to keep an accurate count on miles, an assessment of my abilities, and an account of what's working and what's not.

So far, since the big race, I've run 3 times- once for 3 miles and twice for 4. My goal for 2010 is to break the 4 hour barrier, so I'm running faster now than I ever did training for this year's race. I walked for a short bit on one of the 4 milers, something I would have never done a month ago, but my pace was still over a minute per mile faster than anything I had run before. My hope is that by setting my pace fast from the get-go, it will become my standard, and I can train into it. With a year to go- and a blog to keep track of my efforts- we'll see if it works out that way.

10/24- 3.0- ??
11/1- 4.0- 32:05
11/8- 4.0- 33:00

MTD- 11.0