Pheidippides’s BodyBlog

I achieved the first goal of my fall fitness plan yesterday at a local half marathon.  My goal was to beat 1:30 in the half marathon, an average 6:52 min/mile pace.

Conditions were absolutely perfect: sunny, temperature at race start about 49 degrees, no wind.  My Achilles tendon felt completely healthy, and I felt aerobically fit and well rested.  The only downside was my weight, up to around 174 pounds and well over where I want it to be, and my relatively low weekly mileage total of about 30 or so, owing to the fact that injury forced me to stop running altogether 10 weeks ago for 18 days and I had to ramp up slowly.

My race plan was to start out right at goal pace, find a group to run with at that pace, and run even splits over the entire race.  I pretty much did that.  I ran the first mile in 6:54, and my mile splits from that point forward varied from 6:45 to 7:00, with most of them right around 6:51.  The pace didn’t feel too hard aerobically, but it was tough enough that I felt a lot of overall fatigue by the last two miles.  By the last mile, though, I knew my goal was in sight and I wasn’t going to let it get away, so I toughed it out to get to the line in time.  Interestingly, over the last mile I passed I guy who had passed me earlier in the race - the same guy I’ve written about before who has consistently started behind me in other races and passed me over the last half to beat me.  With half a mile to go I saw he was slowing down and knew I had to pass him to reach my goal.  I did.  With about 100 yards to go I could see the clock next to the finish line ticking closer to 1:30.  I couldn’t bear the thought of getting so close and not making it so I poured it on, and crossed the line with about 2.2 seconds to go (gun time).  My chip time ended up being a bit better than that, since I had started a few rows behind the starting line — 1:29:54.2.

So now I’ve achieved two of my running goals for 2009: a sub-20 minute 5K (19:22) and a sub-1:30 half marathon.  Next up is the toughtest goal yet, a sub-40 minute 10K, on Thanksgiving.  Then in December I run the marathon yet, but I haven’t quite set my goal for that one.

If I could get my weight down more I would really improve my chances.  Each pound of weight loss, up to a point, is supposed to translate to 2 to 2.5 seconds faster time per mile, so by losing 8 pounds I could run a 10K as much as a minute and a half faster.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 7:08 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.