On Marathon Training
I ran SIX miles today. I was supposed to run six miles on Sunday, but after my weekend o’ driving (I literally drove 1,200 miles in the span of 43 hours), I needed some down time. I got home about 1am on Saturday night (Sunday morning, to be precise) and slept until noon. I got up and had some lunch and then went back to bed at 1:00pm until 5:00pm! I got up again and had dinner, read a book, watched a movie (Dodgeball—ESPN 8: The Ocho is still cracking me up today for whatever reason. I wish there was an “Ocho” because it would probably show past years of Spelling Bees, Scrabble Tournaments, and even RPS Tourneys, which would be so awesome!), and was back in bed by 11pm. I guess I needed the sleep, eh?
So, anyway, I ran SIX miles (when you run SIX miles, you must put the number SIX in all caps because SIX miles is a lot of miles) this morning to make up for my non-run Sunday. I got this coolio new GPS gadget from Garmin called the Forerunner 101. It was $99 at Target. I wanted a GPS thingy because now that I am running distances like SIX miles, I wanted an easy way to track when I need to turn around and begin running back home. Instead of walking/metro/driving to a location where I run, I just start running from my apartment and run to the trail. When I was running 3 or 4 miles, running through the zoo was a pretty good route. But with longer runs, I need to run through Rock Creek Park, and there are no good markers on a park trail that I can look up on a map and say, “Oh, here is the three mile mark.” Hence, the GPS thingy. (OK, and I like having fun gadgets. But it’s a necessary fun gadget, so there!)
It took me forever to calibrate it to find a satellite signal when I first bought, so I didn’t actually use it for two weeks. Why did it take me forever? Because the instructions said to stand outside in one place for 15-20 minutes to allow the satellite to home in on the GPS thingy. And, peeps, standing outside in one place for 15-20 minutes sounded lame to Ms. Busy Important me, so instead I put it on a window ledge in my apartment for 45 minutes. Which didn’t work. So then I waited a week and put it on the window ledge at work for an hour. Which still didn’t work. Then I stood outside for 15-20 minutes outside my work building, which happens to be in a “weak signal” area. So that didn’t work. Then, Ms. Smartypants decided to move to the corner so there weren’t so many tall buildings obstructing the flow of satellite goodness from space to my wrist, where my preciousssss forerunner was perched, and guess what? It worked!
In addition to the obvious features (GPS mapping, distance & time measurements), the F101 has a really cool Virtual Trainer feature. You program in the distance you want to run and the time you want to run it in and the screen shows two stick figures running—you and your “trainer.” Your trainer will always run at your preset time/distance figure and your stick figure will track your actual time/distance in real time. Then the screen will show you how far ahead (or behind) you are from the trainer. I used this function on my first SIX mile run and it was pretty cool. I plugged in a 13 minute/mile pace for SIX miles and ended up beating the trainer by 2 ½ minutes, which was good for my competitive self.
The F101 also has auto lap and auto stop features, so it can break down your running time per mile for every mile of your SIX mile run and when you stop to wait for traffic at an intersection, it pauses your timer, so you get an accurate count of distance/time. Using these features, I found that I ran the first mile (which also happens to be the most downhill mile) in 11:16 (2 minutes faster than my 13 min/mile pace!). I ran my second and third miles at 12 minutes (12:11, 12:08, both slightly downhill, or at least down grade). Running back uphill (and obviously in the last half on my run), I ran a 13:05 mile 4, 13:25 mile 5, and a 13:23 mile 6, which is pretty good considering the last part of my five and first part of mile six cover a hill that I have to walk up, which slows my time quite a bit. So, my average pace has improved from a 13 minute mile to a 12:35 minute mile, even with terrain, which is excellent!
Given that it’s only May and I don’t run the marathon until the end of October, I feel like I might even be able to shave some significant time off my pace before then. I’m going to be happy just finishing the race, because that is a huge accomplishment in and of itself, but I’d really like to finish in under 5 hours, which means having an AVERAGE pace of 11:27 or better over the 26.2 miles.
And, I’m running a 10k in June (which I may have mentioned before but am too lazy to go look at my archives and see), and I just realized that I pretty much ran a 10K on Monday, because a 10K is 6.2 miles! Sweet, huh?
So, anyway, I ran SIX miles (when you run SIX miles, you must put the number SIX in all caps because SIX miles is a lot of miles) this morning to make up for my non-run Sunday. I got this coolio new GPS gadget from Garmin called the Forerunner 101. It was $99 at Target. I wanted a GPS thingy because now that I am running distances like SIX miles, I wanted an easy way to track when I need to turn around and begin running back home. Instead of walking/metro/driving to a location where I run, I just start running from my apartment and run to the trail. When I was running 3 or 4 miles, running through the zoo was a pretty good route. But with longer runs, I need to run through Rock Creek Park, and there are no good markers on a park trail that I can look up on a map and say, “Oh, here is the three mile mark.” Hence, the GPS thingy. (OK, and I like having fun gadgets. But it’s a necessary fun gadget, so there!)
It took me forever to calibrate it to find a satellite signal when I first bought, so I didn’t actually use it for two weeks. Why did it take me forever? Because the instructions said to stand outside in one place for 15-20 minutes to allow the satellite to home in on the GPS thingy. And, peeps, standing outside in one place for 15-20 minutes sounded lame to Ms. Busy Important me, so instead I put it on a window ledge in my apartment for 45 minutes. Which didn’t work. So then I waited a week and put it on the window ledge at work for an hour. Which still didn’t work. Then I stood outside for 15-20 minutes outside my work building, which happens to be in a “weak signal” area. So that didn’t work. Then, Ms. Smartypants decided to move to the corner so there weren’t so many tall buildings obstructing the flow of satellite goodness from space to my wrist, where my preciousssss forerunner was perched, and guess what? It worked!
In addition to the obvious features (GPS mapping, distance & time measurements), the F101 has a really cool Virtual Trainer feature. You program in the distance you want to run and the time you want to run it in and the screen shows two stick figures running—you and your “trainer.” Your trainer will always run at your preset time/distance figure and your stick figure will track your actual time/distance in real time. Then the screen will show you how far ahead (or behind) you are from the trainer. I used this function on my first SIX mile run and it was pretty cool. I plugged in a 13 minute/mile pace for SIX miles and ended up beating the trainer by 2 ½ minutes, which was good for my competitive self.
The F101 also has auto lap and auto stop features, so it can break down your running time per mile for every mile of your SIX mile run and when you stop to wait for traffic at an intersection, it pauses your timer, so you get an accurate count of distance/time. Using these features, I found that I ran the first mile (which also happens to be the most downhill mile) in 11:16 (2 minutes faster than my 13 min/mile pace!). I ran my second and third miles at 12 minutes (12:11, 12:08, both slightly downhill, or at least down grade). Running back uphill (and obviously in the last half on my run), I ran a 13:05 mile 4, 13:25 mile 5, and a 13:23 mile 6, which is pretty good considering the last part of my five and first part of mile six cover a hill that I have to walk up, which slows my time quite a bit. So, my average pace has improved from a 13 minute mile to a 12:35 minute mile, even with terrain, which is excellent!
Given that it’s only May and I don’t run the marathon until the end of October, I feel like I might even be able to shave some significant time off my pace before then. I’m going to be happy just finishing the race, because that is a huge accomplishment in and of itself, but I’d really like to finish in under 5 hours, which means having an AVERAGE pace of 11:27 or better over the 26.2 miles.
And, I’m running a 10k in June (which I may have mentioned before but am too lazy to go look at my archives and see), and I just realized that I pretty much ran a 10K on Monday, because a 10K is 6.2 miles! Sweet, huh?
posted by Jaime at
3:48 PM
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