Hey Brian, After your comment on my blog I listened to your post. Obviously Jack will know best but it sounds like maybe you just started too fast. He always cautions that you can lose so much in the second half of a race if you do. If that’s the case then maybe you just need to adjust your racing strategy rather than give up on your marathon goal. Could be an easy fix =)
I think you’re right. Pacing is always hard for me, and I definitely overdid it on mile 2. We’ll see how things go, but I’ll still probably need to temper my expectations at least a little.
Cheer up, my friend. You’re still running! I’m no expert, but we’ve run together enough for me to have an opinion – 3:35 is well within your reach. You shouldn’t give up on that because of 1 bad race.
I think you had a bad day. Even though you ran the early miles too fast, you should have been able to run low 8s for the rest of the run had you had a good day. I say, don’t readjust your goal if you are comfortable with your training paces (you can do the runs and they don’t seem too hard, all out efforts), and run the Quincy Half Marathon on 3/21 as a benchmark for your training level.
OK Brian – this might help you feel a little better about Heinous – or, I mean Hyannis:
Your first 6.5 miles were run in 51:15. Your second 6.5 miles were run in about 57 flat – (I took off a minute for that water stop at mile 9) – so this 6 minute positive spread works out to a 3 minute improvement if you had simply evened out your splits with a different pacing strategy (typically works out to about half your split difference).
So, take off 3 min for pacing, 1 min for the water stop and maybe a minute for the extra .13 miles at the end and you’ve got 5 minutes – so had you run the perfect pace/race, you could have nailed a 1:46 – that’s a 5 minute PR on a “bad day”
There will always be days when our stars are not aligned – so we suck it up and do what we can….letting go of the external measures of our performance (time) and focus on optimizing what we can do with what we have left on such days – crossing the finish line with our last effective step. That’s all anyone can ever do.
Bottom line, you’re in much better shape than your 1:51 indicates.
And your 3:35 goal is actually slower than what your 5K and 10K PRs indicate you’re capable of running.
Ana-Maria is right – plan to run Quincy – even if just for another good effort – and read Little Betsy’s blog about letting go of the numbers and practicing a little Zen-running for a while.
jack Fultz, 
Stephanie 2:12 pm on March 1, 2010 Permalink |
Hey Brian, After your comment on my blog I listened to your post. Obviously Jack will know best but it sounds like maybe you just started too fast. He always cautions that you can lose so much in the second half of a race if you do. If that’s the case then maybe you just need to adjust your racing strategy rather than give up on your marathon goal. Could be an easy fix =)
Brian Sawyer 2:18 pm on March 1, 2010 Permalink |
I think you’re right. Pacing is always hard for me, and I definitely overdid it on mile 2. We’ll see how things go, but I’ll still probably need to temper my expectations at least a little.
Mark Loranger 5:17 pm on March 1, 2010 Permalink |
Cheer up, my friend. You’re still running! I’m no expert, but we’ve run together enough for me to have an opinion – 3:35 is well within your reach. You shouldn’t give up on that because of 1 bad race.
Ana-Maria 6:21 pm on March 1, 2010 Permalink |
I think you had a bad day. Even though you ran the early miles too fast, you should have been able to run low 8s for the rest of the run had you had a good day. I say, don’t readjust your goal if you are comfortable with your training paces (you can do the runs and they don’t seem too hard, all out efforts), and run the Quincy Half Marathon on 3/21 as a benchmark for your training level.
jack Fultz 2:26 pm on March 11, 2010 Permalink |
OK Brian – this might help you feel a little better about Heinous – or, I mean Hyannis:
Your first 6.5 miles were run in 51:15. Your second 6.5 miles were run in about 57 flat – (I took off a minute for that water stop at mile 9) – so this 6 minute positive spread works out to a 3 minute improvement if you had simply evened out your splits with a different pacing strategy (typically works out to about half your split difference).
So, take off 3 min for pacing, 1 min for the water stop and maybe a minute for the extra .13 miles at the end and you’ve got 5 minutes – so had you run the perfect pace/race, you could have nailed a 1:46 – that’s a 5 minute PR on a “bad day”
There will always be days when our stars are not aligned – so we suck it up and do what we can….letting go of the external measures of our performance (time) and focus on optimizing what we can do with what we have left on such days – crossing the finish line with our last effective step. That’s all anyone can ever do.
Bottom line, you’re in much better shape than your 1:51 indicates.
And your 3:35 goal is actually slower than what your 5K and 10K PRs indicate you’re capable of running.
Ana-Maria is right – plan to run Quincy – even if just for another good effort – and read Little Betsy’s blog about letting go of the numbers and practicing a little Zen-running for a while.