Michael: Finished Before the Finish Line

Panamanian
Mountain sky is a light show
Of stars and planets.

Monday, March 19, 2018

Just days away from my last road race as a 59 year old and I’m already dreading the outcome will dash I’ll my big dream hopes going into my big race year as a 60 year old.

How come? Because I have no idea of what to expect, yet if I feel good and feel that I ran a good race, I know it’ll be wise to use the results to modify the pace of my workouts and my expectations for the upcoming year.

Right now I’m running almost purely by feel. I do speed work on a slight uphill in Griffith Park on Mondays. I run hard for 30 seconds 9 times than do three all out efforts for 22 seconds on near level ground. I roughly know that I’m holding steady week by week because of the landmarks I use to quantify me efforts, but I don’t know the distance.

That’s also how I’ve been running my tempo runs on Wednesday: three minutes hard; one minute off, but again I don’t know the distance I’m covering.

But soon I will. I’ll be running a two loop basically flat course that’ll add up to a half marathon. I’ve run half marathons within the last 10 years under 1:25, so I’ll be very interested to see how the numbers shake out Sunday.

If they don’t look good I’ll probably have to adjust my dream of going under 5:20 in the State Street mile in June, and whether it’s realistic to expect to run a road 10k around 40 and a 5k around 19. I’ll also have to re-think whether the trail Bull Dog 25k  in August under 2:10 is plausible.

On the other hand, if all goes well I can continue with the way I like to train and not worry about jumping on a track or getting a watch that will give me a more objective readout of my workouts.

I really do enjoy working out the way I have been, but I’m also results driven and am willing to modify my training if that’s what it takes to improve. Either way, Sunday will be an eye opener.