Pittsurgh Marathon

I didn't run the Pittsburgh marathon yesterday, but I'm still thinking about doing it someday. My original intent was to train at a nice slow pace of about 12:30 minutes per mile and maybe push it to 11 min./mi. for the actual race. From there, I could train at 11 min./mi. and take another minute and a half off my time for each race until I could run 7 min./mi. However, it takes a long time to run that slow and it was taking away from my sleep since that was the only time I could get away from the family. So after running a half-marathon one night in under 3 hours, my body gave out, and I was sick in bed all weekend.

Therefore, my new idea was to run a 5K at that slow pace and take a minute and a half off my time each race until I could run that at 7:07 min./mi., which would be good enough to qualify for the Boston marathon. I don't intend to run the Boston marathon, I just want the piece of mind of knowing that I could if I wanted to. Training never exceeded 7 miles for the 5K, so even at 12:30 min./mi., training was less than an hour and a half. The actual race was under 35 minutes.

Now I'm training at 8 min./mi., so I should be able to run at 7:07 in less than 6 months. The complete program that I adapted for myself from http://www.halhigdon.com takes up to 6 months, but there are test runs along the way. If I meet my goal on one of the test runs, I start over training at that new time. I've never taken the full 6 months yet because I've always been able to meet my goals at one of those test runs so far. Of course, this is the toughest step, so I won't be disappointed if it takes me longer.

Once I can run a 5K at that pace, I'll try running an 8K, a 10K, a 15K, or a half-marathon, and eventually a marathon at that pace. If I don't hit a ceiling, I'll keep going until I can do an ultra-marthon of 50K, 50 miles, or 100 miles, although I suspect I'll hit a ceiling before then. If I hit a ceiling, my new goals will be pro-rated based on my age because the qualifying times for races like the Boston marathons increase every 5 years after 35, giving runners a few extra minutes to make it. Those increases go up to 80+, so if I'm still kicking after that age, I'll have to set some new 5-year goals for my health.