I may have mentioned I'm not a runner. However, back in 2001 I was talked into running a marathon, to date it's my first and last, by a dear friend of ours who'd already run several. Living in the south at the time, we'd picked the Jacksonville, FL event. We trained together through the Summer and Fall. I was following Hal Higdon's book as best I could and she would modify it here or there. Going into the event, we had agreed that we'd run with each other.
At what seemed like the last minute, she found out her brother wanted to run it with us as well. Unfortunately, he really hadn't been training. Being my first one and not really sure how to approach it, I stuck with my promise to run as a group. The pace was quite slow as my training partner's brother wasn't really prepared. As a result, by mile 19, she told me that, while she appreciated that I was sticking to our agreement, I could go on by myself. So, I did, and finally finished in 5:06, 17 minutes ahead of my running partner and her brother.
My knees were killing me and I really didn't see myself running another marathon again -- I'd achieved my goal and could move on. Over the years, though, I did run several half marathons. Again, in all cases, I was committed to running with someone else. Up until this Spring, my fastest time had been a 2:18. Then, literally on a last minute whim, I decided to try to run the Madison (Half) Marathon with several of my sisters-in-law and my brother-in-law. On-line registration had closed, so we all hopped in the car and sped to Madison to try and beat the deadline for in-person registration. We made it with just a few minutes to spare and I believe I was the last one to register. My brother-in-law was doing the full event and the sisters-in-law and I were doing the half.
The next morning we managed to run what turned out to be a PR time for one of the sisters-in-law, a 2:05. Turns out it was also a PR for me, given how I'd been running thus far. I felt surprisingly good after that run, especially for entering without really training for it and doing the run at the last minute. I think I've already mentioned that the rest of this triathlon season went well for me, so I think I approached my training and fitness well. Later this summer, at the end of a 70.3 half Ironman, I managed to run the 13.1 miles in 2:01 for my new PR.
This takes us up to this past weekend. I've been running with a new running partner the past month or so. He's much faster than I am, having run a 1:31 half marathon just this past summer. Running with someone faster than you motivates you to keep your own pace up. As a result, I've moved from a sometimes I can run as fast as 8:00 pace to being able to regularly do so in our training runs. We run on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with Tuesdays being shorter and Thursdays a bit longer.
This past weekend we also decided to run on Saturday. I told him that I'd like to go a bit longer, maybe for two hours. I was hoping that we'd come close to covering a half marathon distance, but that wasn't really my goal. So, off we go, settling into a nice pace right from the start and we start talking. I have a habit of starting to run a bit faster when I talk, especially if we're going up hill. We ran along the Mississippi river so there were several decent hills along our route. Around the eight mile mark, we started discussing how we'd meander on back towards home and I realized that not only would we be able to get in my 13.1 miles, but that we were running faster than my previous best of a two hour pace.
Cutting to the chase, we passed the 13.1 mile mark (using his Garmin GPS watch) and I hit a split on my own Timex heart rate monitor: time was 1:49:47 or an 8:22 pace, and I did it all with an average heart rate of only 148. A new PR, and I did it as a matter of course during a training run in the off season. It really felt good and I've been fine after the run.
I do have some slight concerns that I'm doing a bit too much a bit too early at possibly a bit too fast a pace. There's a chance I could burn-out or, worse, push myself to an injury. I am being careful with my rest and am still working in little microcycles of stress and relief, so hopefully I'm just building a really good base. I guess time will tell.
I can't help but note that if I extrapolate out that time for the full marathon at the end of the Ironman, it would be a 3:38 time. I realize that's likely not possible, given that I'd have also just biked 112 miles before-hand, but it is a nice confidence booster to realize that my running, my historic weakest leg, is truly getting better.
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