Coming off the Philadelphia Marathon, I jumped back into training right away. I am looking to improve on my speed this winter. I am currently targeting an indoor mile and 3k at the BU Mini Meet on 12/29. I have been doing shorter track workouts to sharpen my speed. In my mind, I have to hit faster times at shorter distances in order to run a faster marathon. This makes perfect sense. I ran the Beat Santa 5k in Portsmouth, RI last weekend. How did the race go? I won! I should rephrase that. I won, but was not completely satisfied. I ran in this local 5k with a field size of about 200 runners. I looked at the results from the past couple years and a few runners went under 17:00, so I figured the competition would be there. Also, the fun part about this race is that someone runs dressed as Santa. If you beat Santa, you win a prize at the end. It's a nice race put on by the Rhode Island Road Runners, a local club. My goal for this race was to try and break 17:00. When the gun went off, I ran out and did not look back. I stuck to my race plan during the first mile and went through it in 5:26, which is a little under sub-17:00 pace. At this point, there were no other runners within 20-30 seconds of me. I was running alone and did not know what to do with it. Do I keep hammering? Do I back off and run for the win? I do not often find myself running alone, even in most local road races. There will still usually be a few other runners for me to chase or work with. This was not the case with this race and is why I think I did not finish as strong as I would have liked. The second mile of the race was into 15 mph of wind on a brisk 30 degree day. I had nobody to tuck in behind or share the work with. I lost focus of my time goal and my mentality shifted to finishing the race and securing the win. My second mile was in the 5:50s and then I put it in cruise control to the finish. After mile 2, there was a turnaround. My lead was still around 30 seconds and I knew I just had to maintain the pace I had slipped into. I did not know the course well and did not kick to the finish line. The race course was not accurately measured, being closer to 3.2 miles. I ended up running 18:30, which on a 5k course that day would have put me sub-18:00. It was a tough day for racing but it was still a good learning experience. I hope to win more local road races and found that I learned a lot from this day. It was a unique experience to pull away from the rest of the runners in the first mile and then race against yourself. I need to learn how to maintain my pace while running solo. I did not do that in this race and was not happy with my end time. The post-race festivities were a lot of fun. I saw one of my old cross country coaches from high school and he gave me a lot of praise and encouragement. It was a great feeling beacuese I was never running in the front of cross country races during high school. I am excited to train this winter, which brings me to the point of this post: motivation. It is very difficult to stay committed to running in the winter. It gets dark out early. It snows. It gets cold out. My suggestion is to pick out your goal race for the spring. Start your preparation now for it. Make a list: what steps do you need to take to reach your goal? Write them down. It will help give your training a purpose during these winter months. You have to ask yourself if you are going to be able to tough out each day of training and find out if it is worth it. It is. Have confidence and train safely. Make sure to have fun with it, there is nothing like running in the snow! Right now, I am maintaining relatively high mileage (70-80s+) and working on my speed. This is the beginning phase for my marathon build-up for Boston. The training I am doing now is just as important as the marathon specific workouts and mileage I will do in March and in April. It will help to bring down my marathon pace and allow me to run faster in the spring. I am motivated now so that I will be ready to set a big PR in the spring and conquer Boston. That's all I have. Train with a purpose this winter and be safe!
Merry Christmas,
David
