When I signed up for it, it was before I even decided I was running Boston, before I knew how crazy my spring would be! But I was happy none the less because well running marathons has become fun for me. So on Sunday I will do my 4th marathon this year at the Pittsburgh Marathon.
Am I nervous? Oddly, no. I mean, there is always some nerves but I am not like biting my nails in anticipation nervous.
In fact I find myself wondering why I am not more nervous than I usually am before a marathon....
Maybe it is due to the fact that I will be using it more of a training run than a "race" I will not be going for an over all time. I am doing the Run Less Run Faster plan and hoping to get a new PR at the Vermont Marathon at the end of the month. So on Sunday my training plan calls for 20 miles at an 8:04 pace. So my plan for this marathon is to go out and warm up for a mile around 9:00 and then crank out those next 20 miles at the 8:04.
Once I hit that then I will see how my body feels. If I am good maybe I will stick to the pace the rest of the race. If worse comes to worse I will slow it down to my happy pace of 9:00 and enjoy the last 5 miles. I will not know until race day when I get out there. Either way I am excited to get to run another race and have a good weekend.
I am excited to get away for the weekend and unwind. These past few months have been stressful and I need to escape for a bit. So that will be nice, and the fact that there is a shiny medal at the end of my long run on Sunday? Icing on the cake :)
So this brings me to a question for my runner friends.
Do you ever use a race as a training run? How does it go for you?
This will be my first time using a marathon to do so, I have done it for shorter distances.
4 comments:
Have fun out there this weekend! I'm interested to see how you feel about a marathon as a training run. I'm a huge fan of doing races as harder training races.
Hah! This is so out of my league. I haven't tried and I'm not sure I'd be good at it -- I'm good at holding back. But an 8:04 10K wouldn't be holding back for me, let alone a marathon! You are a Runner of Steel!
good luck!! you're going to rock it :)
In preparation for my first marathon in 2 weeks, I've used a couple of races as training runs. They haven't been full marathons and they haven't been 1/2 marathons, but I've done a 10 miler and I even did a Sprint tri. I like it just because it breaks up the monotony of running my normal running route & it gives you the same atmosphere as running in an actual race and how it will be on race day.
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