It’s Monday and I just finished up a “marathon” session of algebra homework. Yes, yours truly has returned to school yet again. I discovered at the end of Summer that if I were to simply beef up my credit hours in math or another subject that I have a good chance of getting to teach at the college level eventually. So, starting with College Algebra, I am back into the groove. Let’s see how that does with my marathon training.
This past Saturday I finished up my first 20-miler of this round of training. Last year, my training plan from Runnersworld.com only had me do one 20 mile run before tapering. This year, I stepped the plan up a notch and it has me doing the 20 three times before taper. Two of these will come in back to back weeks very soon.
I am also still being amazed at my times. Now, I’m still not a speed demon by any means, but my long-er long runs have taken considerably less time than I was doing them in last year. For example, this weekend, I ran my 20 miler in 4 hours, 14 minutes. That is a full 45 minutes faster than last year’s 20, and I still have two that I can improve upon. If I can hold up to this, I have a chance at finishing nearly an hour earlier than my first marathon.
I know that part of the factor in my first marathon was the weather. It was brutally wet and cold. It slowed a lot of people down. However, I didn’t run my training runs any faster, and those were run in good weather.
Early last month, my garmin died so I have been using known routes to run for my long runs. I have a set 14 mile route around South Irving and I’ve added some of my shorter runs to that in order to make the distances. This Saturday, I ran a 6-mile route first, picked up my stash of Gatorade at it’s usual finish, then took off and ran the 14-miler to gain 20. I have even double-checked my mileage in my mapmyride.com route and it’s accurate.
If there is anything I know that I have done differently this year, it is in consistent Summer mileage, strength training, and working on getting the weight down. This past Summer, I regularly ran an 8-mile long run each week, plus tried to keep my weekly mileage near 20. I’ve been doing strength training at the Senior Fitness Center since January. I know it’s been an added bonus. Working on the weight is still a struggle, but I am down to 244. If I can take off a few more pounds before December 9th, it’ll help.
I think I’ve worked harder on this marathon than last year. I am hoping that it will prove out come race day. I’m still injury free and running well. If the weather will cool off a little more, I think we’ll keep running well round here. That makes me hopeful for a good 2nd marathon. But, I still have to remember, job one on race day is just get across the finish line. I’m working on a solid pacing strategy in my long runs to get me at the right point. We’ll see how it goes.
In the middle of all this I am still job hunting. However, I have two appointments tomorrow. One is with a recruiter about an IT job. It’s not ideal, but I need to get in front of someone. I am almost at the point of giving up on IT work for a living at this point, though. My second appointment tomorrow is with my old job. There are a couple of positions open that I can do and I’m going to see if they will work out. It’s work I know I can do with people I know. Both of those would be good right now just to get me going again.
I am enjoying my algebra homework by the way. I do like math. I’m just sloppy at execution. I make little mistakes that miss the mark. I could use sharpening up on those and continuing to improve. That’s something that running and cycling has taught me. We make mistakes in our training. But, we evaluate our training and then we make changes to correct those. We add practice on the new stuff until it works. Then we can put it into our knowledge base for use on race day. Because I know I can do the work to run a marathon, I also know I can do the work to reach whatever goal I set, whether it’s job-related, or just life-related. Happy running, folks!
Big Man Running 