Remember a few days ago when I said the Elizabeth 8K was my first-ever 8K? That was #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement (If you don't get the reference, check out this video).
It turns out, I ran another 8K last year on February 21, back when I had barely hatched the idea of running a marathon. The race was the Salisbury Winter Flight 8K, which had been postponed due to snow and ended up being run on a very warm Sunday afternoon. The results are posted here (PDF link), and if you scroll waaaayyyy down, you'll see that I finished in 43:32, for an 8:45 pace. No wonder I had forgotten about that!
So, in a little over a year, I improved my 8K time from 43:32 to 34:20, from an 8:45 pace to a 6:55 pace. Not bad, eh?
Now my goal is to run an entire marathon at an 8:00 pace. Indeed, if I just ran a marathon at the 8:45 pace I ran last year over a distance of only five miles, I'd probably be a bit disappointed, even though that's a perfectly reasonable pace for a first marathon on a difficult course.
This morning I did a 5-mile recovery run that was supposed to be very easy one. It wasn't terrible, but it didn't feel great, even at a 10-minute pace. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, just a few creaky bones, but it's a reminder that I need to keep working at this. I have another recovery run slated for tomorrow so hopefully I'll feel better for that one.
Details of today's workout are below.
did you run XC in college? I was telling someone the other day that I had only run 1 8k (when I was 13) until they corrected me and reminded me that I an 8ks at every meet in college.
ReplyDeleteI didn't run XC in college -- just track, so I think I've honestly just done the two.
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