I Delivered: 11 miles with most of 9 faster than Race Pace!
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| Rockin' my new visor! |
I've been thinking a lot about my goal to run a Boston Qualifier at Rio and how important it is to me to achieve this goal. While I like the plan that Coach BB made for me, I've been feeling nervous about following it on my own and not having a coach to give me feedback on workouts and make changes to the plan if necessary. Last week I was listening to a Another Mother Runner podcast and they were discussing training for a marathon and one of their tips was to hire a coach to help you with your training. Then they mentioned Christine Hinton who wrote all training plans for their book Train Like A Mother. So I contacted her and explained my situation and she agreed to help me. She took a look at my training plan and made some adjustments to it, including moving the longer pace runs which I had been doing on Fridays into the long runs on Saturdays. Obviously she's not here so I can't do workouts with her but we'll talk by phone and email and she will hopefully help boost my confidence and keep me on track for achieving my BQ goal.
So Coach Christine's instructions for this week's long run were to run 11 miles with one mile as a warmup, then 9 miles at race pace, then one mile as a cool down. On Friday I started getting really nervous for my Saturday run and I was feeling like I wouldn't be able to hit the pace for 9 miles and that would show Coach Christine that I couldn't really run a 3:35 marathon. Just the usual noise that goes on in my head before any hard workout or race. But this time I really tried to push those negative thoughts out of my head and remind myself that I COULD hit the pace and I COULD show her what I am capable of.
Needless to say I had a lot of nervous energy when I started the run but I really tried to start slow and use that first mile as a warmup. Then the real workout started and I pushed it! I really felt like I was going much faster than my usual stompfest. The first mile of the nine came in right on pace at 8:15 and then they just kept getting faster: 8:10, 8:06. Then I spotted a guy up ahead and picked it up even more to try and catch up to him. I passed him right before I got on the JK Bridge and then I heard him behind me and that motivated me to run even faster: 7:59. I turned around and headed back and managed to keep the pace around 8:00 minute miles for the rest of the run. Woohoo! I loved having the last mile as a cooldown because it meant I could go slowly up my beloved hill.
I was so happy when I was done! I had pushed myself, I had run fast and it was hard but not impossible! It was such a boost for me and gave me a lot of confidence that my training so far has been working. Then I had the nice problem of having to tell Coach Christine that I had actually done the 9 miles faster than race pace. If the point of the workout was for me to feel what 9 miles at race pace feels like, I didn't achieve that because I ran too fast. But she wasn't mad, she was happy with how well it had gone and she said that it's hard for most people to figure out their pace, it just takes practice. Whew!
So I'm feeling like this was a really good decision for me to start working with Coach Christine and I'm hoping that with her help I'll get my BQ! Eight 800s on Wednesday-fun times!!!
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| Eleanor's post-run portrait of me |
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