It's been a productive weekend... the sort of weekend that last weekend, as the last of my vacation, intentionally was not. We were supposed to "officially" start our training for the Eugene Marathon on New Years Eve day but between Justin catering Matisse's party and my chest cold, it just didn't happen. It's probably for the best, too. Who wants to hack and cough for seven miles? I didn't feel too bad cheating by breaking my pre-New Year's resolution by skipping the run as we'd gotten a head start by jogging six miles around Greenlake on Christmas Eve day.
This morning it was time to put our noses to the grind and get into it in earnest. We woke up early (and grumpy) after a late night. It was raining hard and windy at 8 when I hauled myself out of bed but thankfully dry when we left the house. By some miracle, we weren't rained on, though we did have to push hard against the wind both on the way out and the way back.
I'm proud to say that this is one of the few times I've run eight with miles without stopping to rest my muscles-- happily by far the easiest and the fastest. Our estimate of distance may have been slightly over, as there is no zero mile marker on the Burke Gilman trail and it always takes us longer to get to the one mile marker than it should. With stoplights and drinking fountain breaks, we hit just about a ten-minute-mile for a total time of 1:23:29.
Part of me is still disappointed that I can't run a faster per-minute pace during distance runs, but I have to remind myself that I haven't been doing this long and every time I run, it gets easier to go farther. It was 2004 when I ran my first 5k, which was much scarier for me at the time than the marathon was in October. And I'm no longer breaking the record for the farthest I've ever gone with each training run-- this is just a recap. My goal is still to make it to race day without injury and complete the Eugene Marathon successfully, whether I set a personal record or not. My hope, however, is to run faster and breathe easier, enough so that I PR without effort. A marathon is still a long way to run, over three times what we ran today. With race day still months away, I've got to keep pushing hard and with a little luck it will be good going all the way.
Posted on January 07, 2007 @ 11:54 AM | 1 comments
This morning it was time to put our noses to the grind and get into it in earnest. We woke up early (and grumpy) after a late night. It was raining hard and windy at 8 when I hauled myself out of bed but thankfully dry when we left the house. By some miracle, we weren't rained on, though we did have to push hard against the wind both on the way out and the way back.
I'm proud to say that this is one of the few times I've run eight with miles without stopping to rest my muscles-- happily by far the easiest and the fastest. Our estimate of distance may have been slightly over, as there is no zero mile marker on the Burke Gilman trail and it always takes us longer to get to the one mile marker than it should. With stoplights and drinking fountain breaks, we hit just about a ten-minute-mile for a total time of 1:23:29.
Part of me is still disappointed that I can't run a faster per-minute pace during distance runs, but I have to remind myself that I haven't been doing this long and every time I run, it gets easier to go farther. It was 2004 when I ran my first 5k, which was much scarier for me at the time than the marathon was in October. And I'm no longer breaking the record for the farthest I've ever gone with each training run-- this is just a recap. My goal is still to make it to race day without injury and complete the Eugene Marathon successfully, whether I set a personal record or not. My hope, however, is to run faster and breathe easier, enough so that I PR without effort. A marathon is still a long way to run, over three times what we ran today. With race day still months away, I've got to keep pushing hard and with a little luck it will be good going all the way.
Posted on January 07, 2007 @ 11:54 AM | 1 comments
Comments:
Glad you guys had a good run. My intestines did not cooperate for a happy 8 mile run. But the weather was beautiful!
By 
Rachel, at
1:37 PM, January 07, 2007
