It occurred to me as I ran an easy 10 miles tonight that St. George is three weeks away. The realization sort of stunned me. I'm running a 10 mile road race on Sunday so that means no long run. That leaves one final long run the following weekend. That part of the grind will be over.
This has been a difficult week training wise. I've felt very stale. I tried to do a hard tempo run on Wednesday and my body just wouldn't let me. I had to laugh when later that night I was reading some posts on my favorite message board about the great coach, Arthur Lydiard. When one of his talented runners, Barry Magee, told Arthur he felt stale, Lydiard told him to do three straight days of 22 miles.
I haven't even managed one 20 miler leading up to this marathon but my training has been remarkably consistent since the beginning of the year. My mileage has been steady between 35 and 40 miles a week. I managed 180 miles for the month of August and that's with a trio of days off thrown in for good measure. I've enjoyed my best stretch of training since 2002/2003.
I feel confident that at the very least I will run under the Boston qualifier in three weeks unless something really untoward happens. In fact a race under 3:30 seems well within my reach. But I guess I should be focused on Sunday and the 10 miler before me. I would like to think I can run 77:30 but I'm going to try and do what I did at Modesto. I plan to take it out easy and slowly ratchet down the pace. Based on two weeks ago something under 79 minutes should be within my reach.
Now I just need to find a 5K for the week before St. George to sharpen what little speed I possess. There are plenty of races in the area, I've just got to figure out which one makes the most sense.
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