Praying and Running

Training Details 18 Weeks Total 8 weeks with more than 80 running miles 2 week in a row at 100 running miles 10 runs of 20 miles or more 2 runs of full marathon distance Race Details Finish Time 2:49:46 62nd/3725 52nd/2163 5th/354 Age Group (40-45 male) Negative Split (My first in a marathon) 1st half 1:25:15 2nd half 1:24:31 The best short description of this race would have to be the perfect end to the perfect training cycle. The long description follows. My goal for this race was simple. Crush my PR by running under 2:50 and show the marathon who's boss. Based on my training and tune up races everything looked to be set. All I had to do was go out and execute. Then the weather forecast stared coming in. Cold and windy. In fact the forecasted winds were 15 to 20 MPH and the wind chill a cold 18* for the start and it wasn't going to warm up much. At first I was a bit disheartened but then I decided I had worked way too hard to sacrifice my goal and the fir...

I am about 6 weeks out from the  Indianapolis Monumental Marathon . I haven't blogged to much about my training to date but I am currently on week 12 of an 18 week cycle that peaks at around 90 miles per week. As usual I have been running a lot of 20 and 20+ mile runs. More than prescribed because it works well for me. I have also been pushing the pace because my primary goal is to drop about 3 minutes and 30 seconds from my marathon PR which is currently 2:53:28. While that might not sound like I knew when I set it that it would require a lot of work...hard work. With that in mind, this morning I ran a tough workout that was not on my schedule. The workout was a total of 22 miles and required me to run at goal pace and faster for about 8 miles after I was already 12 miles into the run with my legs good and tired. In this workout each 6 and a half minute segment begins at 10k pace, pretty hard but sustainable, for a minute and a half and then finishes with 5 minutes at goal mar...