Run Faster

Since my 8-miler on Sunday, I’ve been thinking off and on about my goals for the Colfax Half Marathon on Sunday. As I said, I know I’m not in the shape right now that I’d need to be in to run a PR since I had to take quite a bit of time off from running during this training cycle because of injury. However, I don’t want to just treat the race as a training run - I’d like to run it well enough to feel good about going into my training cycle for this fall’s New York Marathon. With that in mind, here are the goals I’ve set, from my most realistic goal to my “dream” goal:

1. To run a negative split, or at least at an even pace.

   Thanks to Sandy for this suggestion. This is a very realistic goal for me as I’m generally pretty good at pacing myself and not going out too fast, but it still gives me something to shoot for.

2. To finish in under 2:10.

   I think this is somewhat realistic for me as I’ve run this pace during my long training runs, although it’ll be a bit of a stretch since I’ve only done a couple runs over 10 miles in the last month, and I did very little running in February and March at all do to plantar fasciitis.

3. To finish in under 2:00.

   Although my PR is over 10 minutes faster than this, 2:00 seems like it would really be a stretch for me right now given my current level of fitness. I’ll need a little race day magic to come close to this goal.

So, that’s what I’m thinking about the race. I hope I don’t sound too pessimistic - I’m really not, and I’m definitely looking forward to the race. I’m just trying not to set the bar too high to make sure I keep myself in check so I can recover quickly and get right into training for New York.

Happy racing!

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