Miles for Moffitt

Race Report

Ran in the Miles for Moffitt in Tampa Florida this morning. As expected, I didn't do real well. I finished in 25:10. Steve did much better than last week, and his brother Peter continued his successful North American Tour by picking up another 2nd in the 50-54 age group.

Steve and I both did something a bit nuts this weekend, we each bought a pair of racing shoes. Steve bought Mizunos and I bought Brooks, which is weird, because he wears Brooks as running shoes and I wear Mizunos. We bought them on Friday and wore them for the Saturday race. They felt great throughout the 5K.

Looking back I did finish 171 out of 1233, so that's not too bad.

Now that I am over my illness, again, I am going to do 5 miles tomorrow. It will be good to get back to training.

10 miler

I put in 10+ miles today at a nice slow pace of 10:30, and it was agony. I don't know if it was because I am not used to keeping the pace slow, or because I ran a hard 6 yesterday. Anyway, I decided that from now on my long runs are going to be on Saturday, with a short recovery run on Sunday. I think the long runs will be easier after having two days off.

10 mile data

15 mile run

I started out this morning for an 11 mile run and I stretched into 15. Perhaps not real smart, but I did finish. It was 1.6 miles longer than I have ever run before.

Garmin data

Stingray 5K

So this morning Steve and I ran the Stingray 5K in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. It was a perfect morning for running. I think the temp was in the mi 60's , low humidity, no wind, that and the nice flat course made for some damn fine running. At the start I went out way too fast, after about half a mile I looked at my Garmin and saw I was running 7 minute miles. I slowed my pace to a more sedate 7:30ish. As usual Steve ran out at a much faster pace and unlike a lot of races, this time I was catching him. I finally caught up to him right before two miles and realized that he was struggling a bit, he had not been running a lot because he has been a bit ill. I decided that since I was training for a marathon now I was not really worried about my time in 5K's. So I slowed down to run with Steve for the rest of the race. We seemed to be running a nice easy pace, at one point I noticed that is was around 8:20. So Steve and I ran side by side for better than a mile, and I tried to keep Steve going by verbally encouraging him. We get to the 3 mile mark and Steve picks up the pace a bit, then he starts sprinting toward the finish. Well, Steve can always out sprint me, so the butthead ended up beating me by two seconds. The big surprise came when I saw the official timing clock at the end. Steve did it in 23:49, and I did it in 23:51, one second slower than my PB. Which is really weird because I felt like I was running slow and easy for a good third of the race. I even had enough energy to talk to Steve as we went along.

Oh yea, Steve and I both got 3rd place medals for placing in our age groups.

Pictures

Garmin data

10 miler

I got in a 10 miler this morning. I also registered for the Space Coast Marathon being run on November 30 of this year.

Marathon Training

So I am now committed to running a marathon sometime between Nov 29 and Feb 28. I was hoping to make the announcement after I had registered, but my spouses job situation and our forthcoming 20th anniversary cruise is making it hard to narrow down an available date.

My long runs lately have been 9 and 10 miles. The 5K season in Florida pretty much ends on May 17th. The next week I am planning to run my first 15 miler. I am also going to increase my mileage on weekdays from 5 milers to 6 and 7 milers. Every three weeks I will decrease my mileage by at least 30% to give my body a break. Every month I am going to increase the distance of my long runs until I have at least one run more than 20 miles before the marathon date. I would love to have a 26 mile training run just to convince myself that I can do it.

I have created a tentative training schedule. The cross training will probably be a spin class, taught at a local YMCA, that is run by a woman I work with.

Also I will continue my crunches 5 days a week, and I will be doing some strength training on Mondays and Fridays.

When I start the longer runs at the end of May I will probably be posting a lot more (if that is possible) to update progress and for valuable feedback. My only goal for the race is to beat 5 hours. So I will not be worrying about pace during the runs, especially at the beginning of the training.

With a little luck I will have a great experience and this can be the first of many.

Tempo Run

Last night I did a 3 mile tempo run with a warm up and cool down mile. I was extreme;y happy with my effort as I almost equaled my 5K race pace.

Map and statistics of run

No runs until this weekend.