Boston: The Other Zone

In the euphoria following the St. Jude Memphis Marathon, I began wondering how much faster I could get? Kenneth Williams or "Koach" called on Sunday to congratulate AB and I on our times and told me he'd be glad to make me a training plan to help me improve my time. When I mentioned Boston to him, he asked what my qualifying time would need to be. I told him 3:10. There was a long pause on the phone. Finally, Koach said, "That's another zone." I'm pretty sure that was his nice way of saying, "Why don't we come up with a more realistic goal for you." 

In order to qualify for the Boston Marathon, males 18-34 must run a marathon in 3:10. That's three hours, ten minutes. In order to run a 3:10 marathon one must run just over a 7-minute mile for 26.2 miles. That, my friends, is fast.

I'm not sure if too many endorphins are running to my brain or if I don't like being told I can't do something (not that Koach said that, exactly), but I really really want to run a 3:10 marathon. 

My foot hasn't even quit hurting from Saturday's run, and I'm ready to get outside and start hoofing some miles. If I'm going to knock 47 minutes off my time I better get moving. 

Does this mean the Transrockies is out the window? Hardly. The way I see it, the Transrockies will be great training for Boston. It takes alot of miles to get ready to run a 3:10 marathon. I stumbled on John Kearsing's blog trying to learn more about Boston Marathon training plans. He ran 70 miles in one week! The really cool thing about John is that he completely bonked in his qualifying run, the Chicago Marathon due to hot weather. He got leg cramps and finished in 3:59. Undeterred, he ran another marathon 20 days later and got his 3:10. Wow. 

The next challenge is the Country Music Marathon in late April. I'm going to train my butt off for the next four months and see how many minutes I can knock off that suddenly slow 3:57:29. I realize I won't run a 3:10 in April, but I want to see how much faster I can go to see if 3:10 would ever be an ascertainable goal for me.

Winding Down

After two days rest, I breezed through six miles this afternoon on Corinth's Coca-Cola 10K loop. My goal for the St. Jude Marathon is to run it in under 4 hours. I ran a 3:52 my junior year of college. If I could run a sub-4 Saturday it would be like being 21 again. In order to get under four hours I will need to average a 9:10 minute-mile or better.

Nine-minute miles have gotten easier and easier over the last few months, but I haven't tried to run a nine-minute mile on a long run. I hope I can do it 26 times on Saturday. 

I've been training for St. Jude since last May. It feels good to be this close to reaching the goal. Last year, after I crawled across the St. Jude finish line I didn't run again for the rest of the winter. I gained 10 pounds and by the time I started running in May I felt like I had never even run the marathon. 

Not this year. 

I'm setting goals to keep myself in shape and hopefully achieve some new milestones. I feel like I'm in the best shape of my life and I don't want to lose it again. It helps that AB has started running. She is so excited about finishing the half marathon Saturday. I can't wait to train for the Country Music Marathon with her this winter. We have really enjoyed having something in common other than crying babies and favorite televisions shows. And I really can't wait until this summer when we start training for the Tranrockies Run! 

How do you train to run 125 miles in six days? Luckily, Transrockies offers this handy dandy training program, which AB and I plan to follow to the mile. Check it out. It's been so cold outside the last few days that I have been daydreaming about running on hot sunny days. There must be something wrong with me.