Friday, September 12, 2014

"Marathon Madness"

So when we last left off I was transitioning from Triathlon training into Marathon training, the last 3 weeks have gone just awesome… so well in fact that I have made the decision to add an additional marathon to my schedule about 8 weeks ahead of my original plan.  I had been ramping up my miles and training specifically for the Madison Marathon in November however after completing several 20+ mile runs feeling great and recently PR’ing my ½ marathon time with a 1:23 I feel like hitting a sub 3:05 to qualify for Boston is within my reach.    

So the first stop on the train to Boston will be the Quad Cities Marathon in Davenport, Iowa on September 28th and I hope to hit a 3:02 time with a secondary goal of sub 3 hours.  The course at Quad Cities is pretty flat and fast, a contrast to the more hilly Madison course so I think it will be a good pick as my first attempt to BQ…  it is also a very well organized and fun race, I ran the relay there last year and had a great time with it.  My game plan right now is to start off around a 6:50 pace which would put me just below a 3:00 time and if I feel well I’ll try and push a bit at the end.  This is all new to me and I plan to make mistakes but hopefully none that will affect my time too much.


Looking ahead past Quad Cities I have a 50K trail race in Waterloo/Cedar Falls on October 11th and then the Madison Marathon on November 9th.   To conquer these two in a decent time I plan on doing a shorter 2 week taper for Quad Cities and plan on picking back up on my original plan following the QC race this month.  Depending on how everything goes in QC I may cut back the intensity and just enjoy the ride for the remainder of the year but knowing me that is very doubtful J.   I am very excited to test my legs these next couple months to see how I do in the longer races, I’m still a marathon newbie but I’m hoping after this autumn crash course I’ll feel much more comfortable moving into next year where I’ve already set some pretty large goals for myself.

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