Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Marathon training tracker - June 25 to July 1

I think that tracking my training runs in my blog has actually been helped me have a lot more discipline in my training. In the four previous times that I have trained for a marathon, I occasionally missed training runs because I wasn't feeling up to it, or I normally shaved off a few kilometers off my target distance. This year though, I've been pretty solid in terms of meeting my distance targets. Which is good.

June 25

Target distance: 14 kilometers
Target time: 1 hour 24 minutes
Actual time: 1 hour 27 minutes

I didn't meet my target time but I did cover the full distance and I managed to keep a very steady pace without slowing down (except to drink Gatorade) throughout the run. And heck, 3 minutes off target is not bad at all.

June 28

Target distance: 21 kilometers
Target time: 2 hours 15 minutes
Actual time: 2 hours 16 minutes

Again, just a fraction off my target time. I was running at a pretty good pace actually until I got past 19 kilometers during which time I felt incredibly tired and had to slow my pace down. Once again, I need to figure out better energy management for the longer distances i.e. 15k and up.

July 1

Target distance: 8 kilometers
Target time: 47 minutes
Actual time: 47 minutes 4 seconds

LOL okay I just had to put the 4 seconds in there. I was kinda kicking myself in the butt for not forcing the issue and increasing my final 200m sprint speed to make sure I was under the 47 minute mark. But I guess I didn't really care. At around 6 kilometers I was actually feeling quite tired and was almost about to decide to slow down or even shorten my target distance to 7km but I found a second wind and actually ended very strongly.

Next target: 16 kilometers in 1 hour 41 minutes on Thursday, July 3. Wish me luck!

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