My last race was a disaster. I went up to the Armory with unrealistic expectations and then got my ass handed to me in the mile. The disappointment of that took a lot out of me, so I’m going to do my best to avoid the same mistakes at this Sunday’s Manhattan Half Marathon. Looking at my running log this morning, I realized that I have 76 miles in for the past 7 days. Add in 96 flights of stairs and, as you can imagine, my legs are less than fresh. A sub-1:25 half is on my list of goals for the year, but no matter how much I want it, I just have to realize that it’s not going to happen this weekend. So where do I set the pace? It’s not written in stone yet, but I think I’m going to shoot for 1:27:00, or 6:38/mile. That would be a personal best (current is 1:27:17) and, as such, is a decent goal but I feel like it’s within reach if I’m having a good day. Now, let’s just hope for a good day…
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Lowered Expectations12 comments to Lowered Expectations |
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Good luck on the HM. I don’t have any races on my schedule for a while. They’re sort of hard to come by in this part of the world at this time of year.
Luckily there’s enough other crazy runners out here that we have some good winter races. Your rest will probably be good in helping you stay focused on Boston, though.
Good luck on the Half! My plan is to do a PW (personal worst), like 50 minutes per mile, but AT LEAST it’ll be warmer than last year…!
Hahaha, I’ve never heard of anyone going for a personal worst before. Good luck, I guess?
Good luck! Have a great race, tired legs and all.
Hope it goes well. I’ll take a guess that 6:36 pace will be fine and you’ll run 86:20 :)
Thanks Flo and Ewen for the words of encouragement. We’ll see what happens…
Good luck tomorrow, Robert! And remember — Central Park is never an easy course, even on a good day.
Remember this?: “I actually came very close to quitting running because of some extremely disappointing times up at The Armory in the mile. It was humilating for me at the time because I was so caught up in the idea of being a fast runner and when I realized that I wasn’t nearly as fast as I wanted to be (or thought I was), I had this whole feeling like, “Why should I even bother? I’m never going to win these races. I’m never going to come close. I should just give up.” But then, it hit me, it’s not about the time that you get when you finish, it’s about how much you enjoy the run.”
Boy, that was a long time, and many miles, and many fine races, ago.
As with me, tomorrow’ll be what tomorrow’ll be.
And did you get my “Ghostbusters” reference?
Wow, good memory. Thank you for digging that one up, it was a really good reminder of the attitude I need to run with today.
But, no, I didn’t get the Ghostbusters reference. That movie is on the long list of movies that everyone else but me has seen…
Just enjoy it. You have 11 more months to hit a sub-1:25 half. You don’t need to check it off the list yet. ;)
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