| I said I was going to run today's half at marathon pace. I'd like to run a 2:58 in Columbus. However, I wouldn't be averse to running a 2:55 in Columbus. I mean, that wouldn't make me cry if that happened. So the whole point of today was to practice feeling out where my ideal marathon pace is. Only problem is that between the wind and the rain and the cold and my sore heel and the boost I've gotten from taking a low mileage week, it was really difficult to feel out the pace I wanted to run at. Standing in the started shoot, barely dressed and shivering in the pouring rain, all I wanted to do was start running to get warmed up. That first mile felt easy and I was so happy just to get my blood moving, I didn't worry too much that it ended up being too fast. I tried to back off on the next couple miles and still hit the mile markers too quickly, so I tried harder to slow down until I slowed down too much. The whole run kind of went on in this Goldilocks manner: too fast, too slow, just right, too fast. In the end, my average mile split was only four seconds faster than what I had in mind at the start, so even though I was annoyed at myself at the finish for letting the competitive atmosphere get to me, it really wasn't that bad. | 6:26 6:33 6:37 6:48 6:58 6:41 6:38 6:48 6:38 6:41 6:57 6:41 6:34 0:40 1:27:42 |
My plantar fasciitis heel thingy is still very much there, but I'm icing and stretching and running fewer miles and doing all the things I'm supposed to, so unless I think it's actually getting worse this week, I'm not going to bother looking into last minute fixes like ultrasound treatments or cortisone shots.
After this morning's soggy discomfort, it's currently a perfect, crisp blue-skied fall day outside in New York. What injustice. I can only hope that the character-building qualities of this morning's race will serve me well in two weeks around mile twenty-two.