Dreams of a Sub-3:00 Boston Marathon
Marathon training gets tedious at times and motivation is sometimes hard to come by, especially at 5 a.m. in the dead of winter when you have to bundle up and go outside in the pitch black and run 10 miles like I did this morning. So lately I have often found motivation in dreaming about finishing the Boston Marathon in under 3 hours. I picture myself crossing that finish line, then looking at my watch and seeing a “2″ as the first digit.
My marathon PR is 3:19:26. That was 2 years ago in San Francisco. Since then I have worked my tail off and gotten much faster. So now my goal is to run Boston in under 3 hours. However, I am being realistic when I say that it’s a long shot that I can accomplish this goal. Boston is a difficult course and old slow guys like me don’t often run sub-3 hour marathons, let alone the Boston Marathon. Working in my favor, though, is that two of the final races I ran last year were done at sub-3 hour marathon equivalents (I did a 5K in 18:23 and a 15K in 59:26). So I have some hope.
Also in my favor is that I have worked extremely hard the past few weeks and will continue to do so until the marathon. I am certain that I am faster than ever. I am now running over 60 miles a week and have already gotten three 20-mile runs in so far, and will do at least 5 more before the marathon. Tomorrow morning I am going 22 miles at a goal pace of 8:00. Two weeks ago I ran 20 miles at a 7:27 pace. I am doing speed workouts, tempo runs, cross training workouts and lifting weights. So I am doing what I need to do to improve.
So is a sub-3 hour effort possible? Yes. However, the more likely scenario is that I finish the race in the 3:00 to 3:15 range. That would still be a PR and I would still be pleased. But to break the magical 3-hour mark would be a dream come true……a dream that is helping me get through these cold, dark winter days.
Workout:
- Type: Run
- Date: 02/22/2008
- Time: 05:00:00
- Total Time: 1:26:10.00
- Distance: 10 miles
- Average Pace: 8:37.24/mile
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Posted by Chris on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 5:00 am and is filed under Run.
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