2010

As my first marathon of the year approaches I think it is time to blog about my goals for 2010 and my plan for this marathon. I'll list them in order of importance.

1) Run a marathon in every month of the year. Pretty self explanatory and well known since it has been on my blog for several months now. It is a stretch and I think my odds of doing it are less than 50% depending on my abilities/travel/family or other commitments. Something to shoot for though.

2) Get a marathon PB sometime during the year. When I got my current marathon PB I was running really well; in fact I got my 5k, 10k, half marathon and marathon PB's within 2.5 weeks. Honestly I don't know if I'll be able to run that well again but if I can then it should be this year while I'm putting on all of these miles. My marathon time was really hindered by the half marathon that I ran two weeks prior and didn't fully recover from otherwise it would have been much faster. That is the only reason that I think I can improve on my current marathon PB.

3) Race well in several smaller, shorter races/triathlons throughout the year. If I don't have other things to look at I'm afraid the marathoning will get stale and I would get burnt out. I'd like to do 2-3 sprint triathlons.

4) Finish all the marathons in under 4 hours. This is not really a big deal, just something I'd like to do. Currently I have 3 marathons within a minute or so of 3:20, three from 3:50 to 4:00 and two slower than that (one I was running with a friend and one I ran about 70 miles in the previous 3 months). Not that I have to make excuses for running 4:00+ marathons but I guess I do.

5) Run a negative split marathon. Honestly, I don't think they make these. I'm supposed to run 20 miles and then get faster? I don't see it.

Finally I also really want to support my wife and son (9)and get them to do some more races/triathlons. My son has done 5k's and triathlons and I'd like him to do more. My wife has done 5k's, has her eyes on 10k's and just maybe, even further. If we all have enough fun even my daughter (6) could get into the picture. She has done one kid's triathlon.

So those are my goals and now my plan for this weekend. I originally thought I'd go out at 8:30-8:40, a comfortable pace, walk through the water stops to keep hydrated and then finish around 3:50, 8:46 per mile. But now the weather forecast is for 20 degrees and a breeze at the start and warming up to mid 20's by the time I finish. Even coming from MN that is not optimal. So now I'll have to wear gloves (and get gel over them), tights, long sleeves and jacket and a hat/headband. I usually carry all my gels in the pockets of my Soark shorts. But with tights I won't be able to do that. I do have pockets in my jacket but they would flop around a lot more right in my stomach area. I could wear my shorts over my tights but I have always thought that looks goofy. Add to all of that the fact that I still have my cold and it seems to have moved from my head down to my lungs. We all know that isn't good. Today it took me about half an hour to clear out all of the nasty green stuff. So I guess things don't look promising and I'll definitely not get goal #5 and could very seriously lose #4 for the entire year. Good thing those aren't the important ones.

I'll have a race report next week.

All in: Wednesday 10 at 8:32 (and it felt good, kept wanting to go faster)