Hopefully I Will Love It When This Plan Comes Together

Sorry, had to make a A-Team reference.

I decided that I’m going with Fontana – I registered yesterday. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the medal – there are going to be medals! I don’t understand how they put this race on for so cheap but they must be getting lots of sponsorships. I also felt like I didn’t want to pay $60 to be beaten up by hills in Laguna. I have done two hilly half marathons this year (Safari Park and Highland YMCA) so I don’t really need another. It’ll be more fun to run downhill, fast, and pay less money.

Lately I seem to be stuck in the 1:50’s and it’s making me kind of loco. Tina posted a week or to about Runners World Smart Coach so I checked it out. When I entered my half marathon time from Safari Park (1:50:01) and next race date I was shocked to see my easy run and long run prescribed pace at 9:42. Especially when I ran my last long run of 13 miles the weekend before PCRF in 8:50 pace. So that got the hamster wheel running in my head.

hamster

It also got the fingers onto Googling if this SmartCoach Crap was legit. I stumbled onto Blondie’s blog (Life in ATL) with my Googling and she had two posts talking about how we’re all running our long runs too damn fast.

A fact that I had known since high school but apparently I have let my ego take over. When we had an easy day, we ran easy. We ran 9-10 minute miles. And we had two girls clocking 12:00 for the two-mile and five girls under 5:30 for the mile. We were, by no means, a slow group (ok, I was slower - 6:15 and 13:30 were my one and two mile times). Yet, when Coach said easy – you bet your ass we took it easy. It’s like I have regressed in my maturity when it comes to running.

Anyway. My point is I’m going to try this slower thing. I’m going to stick to the plan.

smartCoach 

Especially because the plan says I’ll run a 1:47:28. With downhill, that should be like 1:46:xx. We’ll see how good the SmartCoach Crystal Ball of Race Times is in 4 weeks.

(Oh and, thanks, Julie, for the Guns ‘n Hoses recommendation – I actually considered it a couple weeks ago but it’s $70 and probably not a super-interesting course - from what I recall that part of Ontario is just airport and industrial. So, the $35 fastest course in the country wins. Though I totally forgot about the eye candy part – I read your comment after I had registered for Fontana.)

Comments

Popular Posts